History of Oregon Literature/Chapter 32
CHAPTER 32
Historians
From diary, letter, interview.
If already written, retrace all its courses—
Another's book may not be true.
Historians make distrustful mates
And scarce can trust each other's dates.
Rhymes of Research
Ella Higginson, who during 45 years as a well-known poet has never disclosed her exact age to the public, once remarked in good-natured evasion: "The only dates I know anything about are those wrapped in fondant and those that I faithfully keep—when I can be persuaded to make them." History writing would be shorn of half its drudgery and many of its pitfalls if it could be done with this delightful attitude. But it can't, not wholly. Although too much chronology makes stupid reading, a certain amount of it is indispensable, and in local and regional records it is likely to play a more important part than in wider surveys. Formidable indeed is the calendar of Oregon history, and while many careful historians and the Oregon Historical Society have done much to straighten it out, the forces of confusion are still at work and all their past damage has not been corrected. Such a motto as "Fewer and Better Dates" might be adopted to advantage, or, better still, an official commission might be appointed, with the duty of determining the time of all the events that are woozily flying around in books under two different dates, or four, or maybe a dozen. Any writer caught using a different date and not able to prove it before a jury, would go to jail. The commission would have a hard job, but it would be heaven for the historians, who could then be something more than bookkeepers struggling for a trial balance and could settle down and write history in a buoyant and happy mood.
Often an honest chronicler, in a laudable attempt to be concrete, has wished to use an exact hour, day and month in his reference, finding them available all right but in such amazing disagreement that he has to give up in despair and say something general to keep from adding to the bewilderment. Such variety, however, is not the only difficulty of historical chronology, though probably the most frequent. Sometimes a too faithful agreement presents interesting results. This has been the case with a date long perpetuated in Oregon literature — the death of Sam. L . Simpson.
In all the printed matter about him that has been circulated during a quarter of a century, the poet has been vouchsafed something by the biographers that only God can grant. He has been credited with a year of life he didn't live. What has now become a regular delta of error can be traced back through a Bull Run watershed of reliable recorders, to a reliable source. Only there was a slip of the pen or of the memory on the part of one whose chief weakness was that he re called things too well. George H. Himes wrote a short biographical sketch of Sam. L . Simpson that was printed in the Oregon Historical Quarterly. Now, both Dr. J. B. Horner and Mr. Himes possessed as tonishing memories. Coleridge, according to his son, "trusted to his memory, knowing it to be powerful, and not aware that it was inaccurate, in order to save his legs and his eyes." Probably the fact that Mr. Himes' head was such a good encyclopedia was to blame. He had the day right and the month, but overstepped the year. In the absence of other who's who sketches of the poet, this date was copied in the account of him given in the Oregon Native Son, in Horner's Oregon Literature, in the introduction by the poet's own brother-in-law in The Gold-Gated West, and in their notes by Leslie Scott and Robert H. Down. For 25 years in the most available references to Sam. L. Simpson, the public has read that he died on June 14, 1900, when it was June 14, 1899.
This was reported over the telephone to a man who is much interested in the fame of the poet.
"Great Scott," he cried in alarm, "I wonder if it's that way on the tombstone."
"No, it's all right out there."
It is correct in the Lone Fir Cemetery and in the obituary in the Oregonian, but everywhere else the most famous of Oregon poets is recorded as having died a year later than he actually did.
There is, of course, another and very practical side to the whole date situation in history, which softens indictments. Looked at from the angle of how contemporaneous events slide by and are forgotten, the wonder is that things of the past can be located in time as definitely as they are. An historian who cannot for the life of him tell the date of his marriage anniversary or the birthdays of his children, can get greatly peeved because he cannot find out precisely by looking at Bancroft, Carey, Hines' Missionary History, Wyeth's Correspondence and Journals and Lee's own diaries—when Jason Lee and his party arrived at Fort Vancouver.
Oregon history is far from being in a sad condition and is fortunate in the extent of its preservation and the quality of its interpretation. Some of the ablest people in the state have written it and are writing it, and a substantial percentage of the population, including newcomers as well as descendants of the pioneers, are interested in reading it. Both because of its availability and its importance, many outsiders are studying it and putting it in articles and books.
Western states in their efficient historical societies are in inspiring contrast to some of those of the East. The Oregon Historical Society has been gratefully listed in the acknowledgments of numerous books. The state, though not in proportion to the importance of the work or the public interest in it, at least does something and provides a small but trained and eager staff that makes the Society, through its museum and especially through its library, a functioning institution of daily and far-reaching usefulness. The history department of the University of Oregon, in sound emphasis, encourages graduate students to do their research and prepare their theses in fields of Oregon history. Working steadily and intelligently over a long period of years, the University Library, the State Library and the Portland Library have all gathered together large collections of material relating to the state. Other days continue to have a place in the newspapers and in numerous public meetings, and Oregon history is a required subject in the elementary schools. It is still a proud lineage to be descended from the pioneers. Altogether, Oregon's past, instead of being wholly obscured by the greater vividness of modern affairs, has had a vigorous and sustained importance.
Oregon history has been and is being written mainly by six groups: 1, by the pioneers themselves; 2, imaginatively by the fiction writers and poets; 3, by college and university students, particularly those working for advanced degrees in the history departments; 4, by professional people who write it on the side, mostly in their own fields, and by gifted amateurs who study and write it for recreation; 5, by professional historians, graduate students, journalists and an occasional fiction writer in other states; 6, and by the especially important group described in this chapter.
An extended reference has been made in an earlier part of this book to the pioneers as prolific recorders of the history they made, while they were making it or in retrospect afterwards. In Bancroft's History of Oregon there is the following statement about them:
That there was rather more than a usual tendency to authorship among the early settlers and visitors to this portion of the Pacific Coast is true only because of the great number of unusual circumstances attending the immigration, the length of the journey, the variety of scenery, and the political situation of the country, which gave them so much to write about that almost without intention they appeared as authors, writers of newspaper letters, pamphleteers, publishers of journals, petitioners to congress, and recorders of current events.
Oregon history, attractively garmented with fiction
and poetry, has reached thousands of people through
the novels about Oregon, notably those of Sidney Walter Moss, Abigail Scott Duniway, Frederic Homer Balch, Eva Emery Dye and Sheba Hargreaves, and
through the poetry of Joaquin Miller and Sam. L .
Simpson.
The college trained worker in the field of Oregon history is having and, of course, will have a steadily growing influence on its character. In the way of good, they are freeing it from prejudice, making it more accurate and heavily documenting it so it can be accepted. On the other hand, their impact, as it in creases in volume and if it does not change from its present embarrassment and immaturity of interpretation and gracelessness of style, will be actually mischievous. In an environment where it is naturally supposed that English composition would be rather care fully cultivated, these young historians are the worst violators of the following precept by a man who had a good deal to do with universities—Woodrow Wilson, in an essay "On the Writing of History" in the Century Magazine of September, 1895:
Histories are written in order that the bulk of men may read and realize; and it is as bad to bungle the telling of the story as to lie, as fatal to lack a vocabulary as to lack knowledge....There is an art of lying; there is equally an art—an infinitely more difficult art —of telling the truth.
Citizens of rich capacity, and professional leaders, the former for pastime, the latter through interest in the historical background of their work, have contributed a considerable number of essays and pamphlets and some books to Oregon history. Through them the writing of Oregon history has become a widely cooperative enterprise.
This group, in whose hands history has fared well, both in accuracy and in attractiveness of presentation, includes the following men and women: Mrs. Caro line C. Dobbs, historian for the Daughters of the American Revolution and author of Men of Champoeg; Earle Richardson of The Dalles Observer-Itemizer, publisher of the two volumes of Polk County Sketches; R. J. Hendricks of Salem, author of numerous articles and of the well-known book Bethany and Aurora; Ida Turney of Hood River, author of Paul Bunyan Comes West, who used the myth of the master woodsman for a doctor's thesis in the University of Wisconsin and who is now extending it, with much fresh material, into a book; Lulu D. Crandall of the Old Fort Dalles Historical Society, who during the last 15 years of her life gathered historical data on The Dalles and Wasco County with such unceasing industry that "from morning till late in the night she worked, apparently never tiring"; Henry E. Reed, bright chronicler of old Portland days; Omar C. Spencer, Portland attorney, whose writing interest was first stimulated by his fascinating pursuit of collecting books on early Oregon; Frederick W. Skiff, who during 20 years has picked up from attics and second-hand stores $50,000 worth of Pacific Northwest Americana and who has written of his experiences in finding old and rare Oregon volumes and pamphlets in Adventures in Americana; Leona M. Nichols, who is finding much new material in her energetic research and who is writing a life of Joab Powell; Albert Tozier, former curator of the Champoeg Memorial Park, who has filled the old Dr. Newell house with clippings, pamphlets, books and other material on Oregon history and who, in his use of this houseful of documents and of a long, well-stored memory, is widely known as an oral historian} Dr. Joseph Ellison of Oregon State College, frequent contributor to historical quarterlies and author of California and the Nation, 1850–1869; Professor Alfred L. Lomax of the University of Oregon, industrial historian; David Hazen, editor of newspaper departments on history, collector, interviewer and author of Giants and Ghosts of Central Europe; Katharine B. Judson, considered in a previous chapter, who wrote Early Days in Old Oregon and Myths and Legends of the Pacific North-West; Albert Hawkins, for many years historical editorial writer on the Oregonian; Frederick V. Holman, prominent in historical organizations during the later years of his life and author of John McLoughlin, the Father of Oregon; Robert C. Johnson, on the editorial staff of the Oregon Journal, author of a third book-length biography of McLoughlin, scheduled for 1935 publication; Walter Carleton Woodard, author of Rise and Early History of Political Parties in Oregon; historians of the various religious denominations that played an important part in the development of Oregon; county historians, like Orvil Dodge and A. G. Walling; and oratorical historians, including, besides those mentioned in a previous chapter, Charles B. Moores and Binger Herman.
All these have written Oregon history out of an eager interest in the past times of their state. There has been classified with them a group of men and women of various professions who have engaged in history of a more specialized nature. Albert R. Sweetser, professor emeritus of botany in the University of Oregon, is at work on a history of the pioneer botanists of Oregon and the Pacific Northwest, beginning with David Douglas. Mirpah G. Blair, of the Oregon State Library, has written an interesting article on the early libraries in Oregon. Frederick W. Goodrich, Portland musician, has for several years been gathering material for a history of music in Oregon, a field that has received little attention. At the University of Oregon, Dr. H. D. Sheldon, of the school of education, and Professor George S. Turnbull of the school of journalism, are respectively writing a history of education in Oregon and a history of Oregon newspapers. At Oregon State College, Dr. E. T. Hodge is a sort of Hugh Miller of the state, through his writings on geology that go back to real antiquity, as in his Mt. Multnomah, with its convincing theory that this was the ancient ancestor of the Three Sisters; and Dr. E. L. Packard has written extensively on the paleontology of Oregon, digging valuable history out of the ground with a spade. How interestingly such specialized talents can be applied to history is indicated in the article of O. F. Stafford, a chemistry professor, on "The Wax of Nehalem Beach." Other instances of special training applied to history are Chinook dictionaries by linguists; Trade and Currency in Early Oregon by Dr. James H. Gilbert, a well-known economist; and the articles on the historic houses of Oregon by Jamison Parker, an architect.
The writers of such histories, in possessing technical competency, do not escape the customary requirements of research. While their familiar background gives them greater facility, it also gives them increasing standards of thoroughness, so that the work may be better done but there is not less of it. Take, for in stance, Lewis and Dryden's Marine History of the Pacific Northwest. It was compiled and edited by Edgar W. Wright, who for 20 years was commercial editor of the Oregonian. His labors and scant rewards have been described by Henry E. Reed as follows:
The marine history required visits by Mr. Wright to every navigation point in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and British Columbia, for the collection of data and photographs of men and vessels. The enterprise, Mr. Wright told me years ago, was not profitable either to the publishers or to the author. One main cause for the unfavorable result was that at the time of publication the United States was in a very serious business depression, following the panic of 1893. Mr. Wright lived to see copies of the history, with the binding in poor condition, sell for $25 and $50 asked for a copy in good binding.
Apparently there was a time when outside historians were looked upon with suspicion and discouragement. Mrs. Frances Fuller Victor tells how, when she arrived in Portland fresh from San Francisco, she went to see Judge Deady, who was not at all polite in his denunciation of her plan to write Oregon history, telling her that Oregon had suffered too much already from what he called itinerant historians. It has suffered some since, as is natural, but has benefited more, and the attitude now is one of complete hospitality and of appreciation of the advantages of the broader treatment by writers who connect up the history of this region with that of the country at large, who tell about the old Oregon Trail with its long segments in several states, and who give Oregon consideration in accounts of the general westward movement.
The members of the sixth group are presented individually in this chapter, with biographical notes and selections from their writings.
Oregon historians have not been wholly dispassionate either in the way they have handled history in their works or in their personal attitude towards the events and actors of history. The past, to one who delves in it steadily, becomes a vivid world and its characters stimulate strong likes and dislikes through the close association with them that research affords. Those who have taken sides, sometimes with a good deal of emotion, would make a long list. The poets have been a loving brotherhood compared with the historians. Frederick V. Holman, now dead, author of Dr. John McLoughlin, the Father of Oregon and at one time president of the Oregon Historical Society, was a fulsome admirer of the old fur king and contributed to the Oregonian a savage attack on R. C. Clark when the latter presented some facts that he had very definitely found. Other chroniclers have been at outs with each other on the subject of Jason Lee, and several of them have engaged in a regular melee over the Whitman myth. Frances Fuller Victor and W. H. Gray did not like each other, and Mrs. Victor and Hubert Howe Bancroft, after she had worked for him a dozen years, ended up in a newspaper controversy over who wrote several of the Bancroft histories.
In an article in the Oregonian on June 3, 1900, she was accredited with the authorship of several of the volumes. Bancroft wrote a letter of denial, the substance of which she summarized in her reply, printed on July 8, 1900, preliminary to telling the public all about it:[1]
Portland, July 6.—(To the Editor.)—About two weeks ago there appeared in your paper a letter from H. H. Bancroft, saying that, "You are greatly in error when you state that Mrs. Victor wrote several volumes of my history. Mrs. Victor never wrote any finished work for me, but furnished me with much valuable raw material in a crude form, which I put into suitable condition for publication, according to my general plan."
At the first glance, although surprised that Mr. Bancroft should make such a statement, I did not think of replying, as I believed the people of Oregon knew me well enough through my other writings not to be affected by it. On reflection, however, I am rather pleased to have it thus suggested to me to explain some things in connection with my history of Oregon, which I have long wished to have understood.
Anyone who writes from notes, as a historian must, knows that his first draft is never perfect as to style, although it is quite correct as to facts. While writing from others' books, or material of any sort, you unavoidably fall into the style of the writings before you to some extent. Aware of this difficulty, and desirous of avoiding as much as possible its effect on my work, I made an effort to write in a sustained style throughout, although not in what I would have named a polished one. That I could not do, because, by Mr. Bancroft's plan, I was not given an opportunity to polish. The first writing had to go. Mr. Bancroft became my editor. Those who have read my original works, and the volumes of history which were edited by him, must judge for them selves of their comparative merits. If Mr. Bancroft desires to claim whatever of literary merit there is in these volumes, I have no particular objection.
The Pioneer. University of Oregon
My objection to Mr. Bancroft's methods would refer to the subject matter itself. There were certain important, and other exceedingly interesting features of history which should have been included in the Oregon volumes. One of these was the great "Oregon question", in the preparation of which I took much pains, and some others which related to the early settlement of the country. California was given seven volumes. In the first place Mr. Bancroft wished to restrict the history of Oregon to one volume. When I remonstrated and pointed out that there was really more and better material for American history in Oregon than in California, he yielded so much as to allow two volumes, expecting me to include Washington, whose early history was embraced in that of Oregon. As it turned out, there was no room for Washington in the second volume. Then followed the writing and arranging of the volumes on that division, with Idaho and Montana—all parts of the old Oregon Territory. In the same manner I wrote Nevada, Colorado and Wyoming.
There is nothing, perhaps, to distinguish either Mr. Bancroft or myself in these achievements; but such work as I have done I shall continue to claim. Mr. Oak, who was for 16 years in the Bancroft library doing similar work on the native races, and the first five volumes of California, wrote me that I had done quite right in placing my name on the four volumes which were distinctly mine. Other gentlemen in the historical service said the same, and there are witnesses enough to the facts as I have here stated them.
There are many passages in the Oregon volumes from Mr. Bancroft's pen, thrown in apparently with a design to add chic to the style. In my humble opinion, they add nothing to the value of history. They do sometimes startle the unsuspecting reader who comes suddenly upon them, as where I am made to say, in speaking of the conduct of the immigrants of 1841, at Vancouver: "Man is a preposterous pig!" The same criticism applies to some parts of the missionary history, and to the Indian wars. We never agreed on the latter subject, and Mr. Bancroft's editing has made me seem to contradict myself. Had he been the real historian, he would not have overlooked that disagreement between statements.
An amusing incident bearing upon the claim of Mr. Bancroft that I never wrote any finished history, is quite too good to suppress. A certain historical review in the East returned to me an article sent them upon an Oregon subject, with quite a severe rebuke for filching my material from Mr. Bancroft's Oregon, and not only that but imitating his style! Frankly, he did not like Mr. Bancroft's style, so there was an end of it. This appeared very diverting at the time, and I replied at once that it was certainly quite natural that my style should seem to be an imitation of Mr. Bancroft's, as I happened to have written that part of his history too. That confession, of course, drew from the review editor an ample apology. I am inclined to join him in his opinion, because a habit of writing continually from notes for years is no doubt injurious to style. And, therefore, if Mr. Bancroft desires to claim all the honors attendant upon the "finishing" of my work, I make no great protest. That I furnished him "much valuable raw material" is at least admitted. It was material, too, that I had spent years in collecting, and for which I received no compensation. Perhaps that was my own fault. But I am not good at bargaining, and no compensation was ever offered. I can truthfully say that whatever knowledge of Oregon history Mr. Bancroft possesses, he obtained from me. I do not mention that fact as a conspicuous defect in his education, for there was not much known on the subject 25 years ago, and at best, not every one can be a historian, but because I am fond of my work and am grieved that through too much editing it has failed somewhat of my purpose in performing a long and serious labor.
FRANCES FULLER VICTOR.
Twenty-five writers in the sixth group, consisting both of older and contemporary historians, will now be given individual consideration. The listing is chronological for the selections rather than for them, with the idea of having these quoted passages from their works form, as neatly as possible, a short episodic history of Oregon.
1
CHARLES H. CAREY
For half a century, with comprehensiveness and accuracy, Judge Charles H. Carey has been writing Oregon history. Many workers appalled at the wasted effort of having to cover every point from original sources in order to be safe, as if there could be no cooperative headway in such fatiguing business as writing history, have found a glad surcease of much woe and a diminution of much labor in the richness and reliability of his books.
He was born in Cincinnati on October 27, 1857. He was graduated from Denison University in 1881 and received a law degree from Cincinnati College in 1883. That year he married Mary N. Bidwell and began the practice of law in Portland, becoming Oregon counsel for various railways, public service corporations and industrial and commercial companies. He was municipal judge of Portland from 1892 to 1895. His civic activities have been numerous, wide in range and prominent. In this respect — in his capacity and willingness to give —he is a modern prototype of Judge Matthew P. Deady. He has served as vice-president of the American Bar Association and as president of the Oregon Bar Association; as president of the Multnomah Law Library; as vice-president of the Arts and Crafts Society; as president of the Lang Syne Society; as a prominent member of Republican clubs, conferences, committees and conventions; and as a representative in several national and international organizations and societies. He is now president of the Portland Art Association and of the Oregon Historical Association, and is honorary president of the Oregon Writers' League. In 1927 the University of Oregon conferred upon him the degree of master of arts in public service. For a few years he has been corporation commissioner of Oregon.
He was a contributor to Elwood Evans' History of the Pacific Northwest, 1889, and to Harvey W. Scott's History of Portland, 1890. He is author of Index-Digest of the Oregon and Washington Reports, 1888; History of Oregon, 1922; The Oregon Constitution, 1926. Some Early Maps and Myths, 1929; The Journals of Theodore Talbot, 1931 ; and A General History of Oregon, 1935. He edited Lansford W. Hastings' Emigrants' Guide to Oregon, in the Princeton University Press reprint, 1932.
When Oregon Was the Kingdom of Quivera
From A General History of Oregon, 1935
The general region in which the modern state of Oregon lies, was variously known, before discovery, by the now forgotten names, kingdom of Anian, kingdom of Quivera, and New Albion; and those countries, with cities and towns, lakes, rivers and capes, all bearing fictitious names, were shown on numerous maps published in various European countries, to the close of the American Revolution, although, as already indicated, a few map makers, less confident, marked the Oregon region simply as Terra Incognita.
The name Quivera, applied to both the kingdom of that name and to one of several mythical cities therein located, was obtained by Francisco Vasquez Coronado, a Spanish explorer, 1 540, from a story he had from the natives of the New Mexico region. A futile search for this wonderful kingdom, by Coronado, and by others from Mexico, led through the eastern part of the present New Mexico, rather than toward the coast, although the early maps placed Quivera in the Oregon region, above New Albion, or California. The original story supplied a detail about ships from the orient on this coast, bearing pelicans of silver and gold upon their prows, and told how the vessels had sailed 30 days to reach these shores, bearing cargoes of merchandise.
. . . These old stories and old maps relate to periods before actual discovery and exploration, but they have a real bearing upon the history of Oregon, for many of the fictions anticipated fact. Perhaps in no other part of the world has early myth so often foreshadowed actuality.
Thompson C. Elliott, a banker by profession and a historian during many years of spare time, has been a resident of Walla Walla continuously since 1886. He was born in Connecticut on September 10, 1862. He received his early education in the public schools and was graduated from Amherst College in 1885. That institution in 1930 and the University of Oregon in 1919 conferred honorary degrees upon him. He has been actively engaged in investment banking, doing a tremendous amount of research as an avocation and building up one of the largest private libraries of Pacific Northwest material in the country. His interest has been particularly in the sources of Oregon history pertaining to the periods of discovery, exploration and the fur trade. In addition to a large number of historical articles, he is author of the following separate publications: The Evolution of a Lament, 1908; Peter Skene Ogden: Fur Trader, 1910; David Thompson, Pathfinder, and the Columbia River, 191 1 ; The Earliest Travelers on the Oregon Trail, 1912; The Fur Trade in the Columbia River Basin Prior to 181 1, 1915; The Dalles-Celilo Portage; Its History and Influence, 1915; David Thompson and Beginnings in Idaho, 1920; The Strange Case of Jonathan Carver and the Name Oregon, 1920; The Origin of the Name Oregon, 1921 ; "David Thompson, Astronomer and Geographer", a chapter in Agnes C. Laut's The Blazed Trail of the Old Frontier, 1926; In the Land of the Kootenai, 1926; "Doctor" Robert Newell, Mountain Man, 1927; Steptoe Butte and Steptoe Battle-Field, 1927; Camels in the Inland Empire, 1929; Sir George Simpson's Place in the History of the "Old Oregon Country", 1929; Voyages of the Jenny to Oregon, 1792-94, with F. W. Howay, 1929; Spokane House, 1930; The Chinook Wind, 1932; The Murder of Peu-Peu-Mox-Mnx, 1934; Richard {"Captain Johnny") Grant, 1935.
The Mysterious Oregon
The subject of these remarks is the name "Oregon", the ultimate source and meaning of which seem destined to remain more or less a mystery.... In his book Carver says the name "Oregon" was communicated to him by the Indians during his travels, but it has been found that in slightly different form it was contained in the instructions given to these men by Rogers.... The career of Rogers offers interesting details, but these remarks are concerned only with his opportunities to obtain information about a river flowing into the Pacific and called, he said, by the Indians, the Ouragon.... The name Ouragon as a geographic designation is distinctly obscure. It does not appear on any map, as far as yet known. Opinions as to how Major Robert Rogers obtained or came to use it lie entirely in the field of interesting conjecture. Four theories are advanced from which the student can choose, or to which he can add. The first is that Rogers invented it. This theory may be dismissed as unlikely because unnecessary. A second is that it is an Indian word used by a tribe residing north of Lake Superior to designate a bark plate or platter... . How or why this restricted name should have been applied to a river of the western plains and mountains is yet to be explained....A third theory is that the term was the French word ouragon, meaning wind-storm, applied to a river in a country where such storms prevailed in a peculiar manner. Indians could have told Rogers about the climate of the region, and the description would have been accurate. ... The fourth theory is that the name is Rogers’ corruption of the Indian Ouinipegon, the earliest form of the name Winnipeg.... This is based on the famous Ochagach map of about 1728... . This map was published at Paris in 1754, only ten years before Rogers arrived in London. It is entirely possible that a copy would have been available to Rogers at London; perhaps before then in America.... The name Ouragon appears only in the Rogers document—nowhere else....
The name “Oregon” has such a background of romance, history and literature as is not known to any other on the roll of States. It was synonymous and contemporaneous with the mysterious “River of the West.” It symbolized the road to the Pacific. It was first uttered by a soldier whose daring and achievements in battle were magnificent, first printed in the most popular book of the period, and immortalized by one of America’s most cultured poets. It savors of the frontier and the pioneer. It is the mother-name in the entire Pacific Northwest.
3
R. C. CLARK
Even more than in Oregon, local and state history is emphasized in Texas. At least when the writer of this book once attended a district school there, he thought it a little odd that the curriculum should include Texas history but not United States history. Since that is the home state of Dr. R. C. Clark, now one of the best known of Oregon historians, he already had the habit of close-up focus before he came and, as a matter of fact, had already written a history of Texas. He was born at Thorp Spring in 1877 and was graduated from the University of Texas in 1901. Four years later he received his doctor's degree from the University of Wisconsin, teaching in Epworth University in Oklahoma City from 1904 to 1905 and in the Pennsylvania State Normal from 1905 to 1907. He has since been with the University of Oregon and is now head of the history department. In addition to his own writings, he has done much for the history of Oregon through the encouragement and guidance he has given to local and state research among graduate students in the history department, and through the counsel he has given the University Library in building up a scholar's collection of Oregon material. He has contributed essays to the Oregon Historical Quarterly, and furnished several articles on Oregonians to the Dictionary of American Biography, including sketches of Abigail Scott Duniway, Harvey W. Scott, Matthew P. Deady, Joseph Dolph and John H. Mitchell. He is author of Beginnings of Texas, 1907; History of the Willamette Valley, 1927; and History of Oregon, 1925, with Robert H. Down and George Verne Blue and in use since its publication as the required text in the elementary schools.
The Food of the Indians
From History of the Willamette Valley, 1927
Fish was the mainstay of Chinook economy, and they were excellent fishermen. They had scoop nets made of fibrous cords of dogbane bark held by willow withes, which were floated by corks of cedar or weighed down by stones. Immense quantities of fish were caught in these nets in still water. . . . Since salmon runs are seasonal, preserving of food by drying had become a habit. The heads of trout were buried in holes lined with straw and skins and covered with skins and earth. The fish were opened and exposed to the sun on the scaffolds and pounded fine after drying. Placed in rush baskets lined with salmon skins, pressed down, covered with skins and wrapped in mats, fish thus prepared would keep for several years.
In contrast with the Chinook diet we find that of the Calapooias was principally vegetarian. They found in all nearly fifty plants of which they could use either seeds, fruits or roots for food, the most important being camas or wappato. . . . Ten-pound cakes of three inches in thickness were made which would keep indefinitely; and camas was considered even by the whites the equal of the potato, being both palatable and nutritious. Sometimes water was poured on the hot stones and the steam used in cooking, or hot stones were placed in water in tight baskets the Indians were able to weave. Fish, meat and other vegetables were similarly cooked with results quite astonishing to contemporary whites.
The wappato root was about the size of a small potato, coarser than camas and slightly bitter, but palatable and much valued. Because of its prevalence on Sauvie's Island, that island and the Indians who harvested and traded in this commodity were known as Wappato. Indian women waded into the marshes in all sorts of weather and loosened the bulbs of the plant with their toes. Lewis and Clark found about 100 light canoes of gatherers of wappato congregated by one of the swamps in April, 1806. Both wappato and camas were articles of trade, especially the former, because of the convenient location of the source of supply.
For fruit, the natives had "fine large blackberries, delicious, large raspberries", crabapples, gooseberries, cranberries, huckleberries, and the pine forests furnished the distinctively western salalberry. . . . The migratory system of the Indians was quite suited to and accommodated by the delicious fruitstands along the future highways to California. . . .
Lack of horses and adequate weapons limited the hunting activities of the Willamette Valley Indians and caused them to invent ingenious methods of killing game. Practically the only weapon used was a very elastic bow made of white cedar, to which was fitted an arrow of pine or hardwood with a barb of iron, copper or stone. Pits and snares were sometimes used for the larger game, but the common method was to hunt the deer while wearing a deer head. By crouching in the rank grass and rubbing the horns occasionally in imitation of the deer's movements, the stalker was able to approach closely enough to use the bow and arrow effectively. Since a deer's sharp hoofs were formidable weapons, it was rather dangerous to miss the mark. The success of the method depended on the tameness of the deer and its presence in the open spaces, and when the Indians found that the whites with their startling guns and wholesale slaughter were making the deer too shy to hunt, they prepared to drive out the intruders in 1814. By burning the prairies the Indians forced the deer to graze on convenient hunting grounds, and they by this method also made it easy to collect wild honey, grasshoppers and crickets. The insects were dried and made into a pemmican by means of a pestle and mortar. Even after great inroads had been made by the whites, game was still plentiful in the Willamette Valley in 1835.
4
J. NEILSON BARRY
J. Neilson Barry was born in Wilmington, North Carolina, on November 26, 1870, and was educated in private schools and academies, in the Virginia Seminary, in technical courses in New York City, and, since his retirement, in the Portland Extension Center and at Albany College.
Of himself he says: "I am a retired Episcopal clergyman, spending the evening of life in research. I am now retired in good standing but long since dropped 'Reverend', the flat hat and the long coat." He was ordained in 1895 by the Bishop of New York, and, volunteering for the mission field, spent about five years at each of three western parishes—at Palouse as a missionary, at Spokane in charge of Trinity, and at Baker as rector of St. Stephens, alternating these assignments with service as curate or rector in New York City, Maryland and Washington, D. C., "until", he says, "having got my breath, I would again return to the beloved Oregon Country." The death of his father left him with independent means. For several years in Spokane he devoted his time to prisoners at his own expense, and, during the war, went to France with the Y. M. C. A. He returned for a while to prisoner work at Spokane, then came to Portland, built Barrycrest at 3852 Greenleaf Drive, "and at last had full opportunity for research." What he likes best is the sleuthing of historical facts in their geographical setting—to ferret out every document regarding some locality, then personally visit it, to find in the geography the full explanation of the records. In his study at Barrycrest he has about 1000 maps, books enough to fill 110 feet of shelves and a vast amount of miscellaneous material so indexed that any item may be located almost instantly. He points out that as an author he is a good student—"I am far more interested in learning for myself than in bothering to write." Neverthless, he has prepared about 40 articles for the Oregon Historical Quarterly and the Washington Historical Quarterly, has contributed extensively to other magazines and has written something like 300 newspaper articles on historical subjects. In addition, he is author of several pamphlets, including Fort William and The French Canadian Pioneers of the Willamette Valley; is joint author with H. M. Barr, principal of the Irvington School, of Redskin and Pioneer, 1932; and has two books scheduled for publication, one ready in manuscript and "material for a dozen."
The Site of Old Fort William on Sauvie's Island
Fort William was built upon the site of the former Cath-lah-nal-qui-ah village of the Multnomah Tribe....Wyeth reached the end of his long journey in 1834 at the same time that the May Dacre arrived after the voyage around Cape Horn, so the livestock and cargo were unloaded at Warrior Rock, near St. Helens, which was the first temporary site of the fort. The brig then went to the Sandwich Islands for additional supplies, while Wyeth looked about for a permanent site for Fort William.
He is said to have selected the beautiful spot which he chose, on the present farm of Mr. Don Moar, because of its being on ground above the high water, and because it was opposite the usual route to the Tualatin and Willamette Valleys, now known as the Logie Trail.
In the latter part of April, 1835, the brig had returned, while a boat 70 feet in length had been constructed, on which was a cabin. A canoe 50 feet long had been dug out from a single log. The cattle, sheep, goats, hogs and poultry were then brought to this new establishment. Various buildings were erected, residences for the officers and men at the trading post, a strong storehouse, and shops for working of iron and of wood. Land was prepared and planted in wheat, corn, potatoes, peas, beans and turnips. An orchard with grafted and seedling apples and many other kinds of fruit was set out. A force of men was engaged in catching and salting salmon. Yet this great enterprise failed. Fort William was located on the west side of Sauvie's Island, Multnomah County. . . . The marker is on the high way between Portland and Astoria; three quarters of a mile north of the modern Logie Trail Road. The fort was direct ly east, across the Multnomah Channel. The old Indian trail into the Tualatin Valley formerly started from near the marker. This was improved by Logie, and became the main highway into the Willamette Valley. The present Logie Trail Road follows the general course of the old Indian route.
5 PHILIP H. PARRISH
Philip H. Parrish is the son of Randall Parrish, the popular novelist. He was born in Michigan on September 5, 1896, and spent his boyhood in Nebraska and Illinois. At the age of 17 he came to Oregon and was for three years a student at Oregon State College, later attending the University of Wisconsin. He was a reporter on the Olympia Morning Olympian and the Bellingham Herald and was a soldier at Camp Lewis during the war. After his discharge from the army, when he was still only 22, he joined the staff of the Oregon Journal, and worked for eight years on that paper. In 1927 he married Margaret Sheridan of Portland and spent that year as editor of alum ni publications at Oregon State College. He returned in 1928 to Portland as a member of the staff of the Oregonian, with which he has since remained, as reporter, columnist and editorial writer. In addition to frequent editorials and a large number of articles on the history of Oregon and the Pacific Northwest, he is author of Before the Covered Wagon, 1931, which, during the few years since its publication, has become the most popular of all the accounts of the earlier period.
The Rumble of the Wagon Wheels
From Before the Covered Wagon, 1 93 1
But it is better to remember him as he was when with such a fine gesture he clasped hands with the new people who spelt an end to the era which he had represented — as he was, for instance, one rainy fall morning in 1 843, when the first great American migration arrived. The night previous, unbeknownst to him, the canoes and barges bearing the sorry men and young wives and babies of this train had drawn up on the shore above the fort. And in the morning, the tall doctor, when informed, had come down from the fort gate leaning on his gold-headed cane, and had bowed in his most courtly manner to the young ladies, and had shaken hands with the callous-palmed plowmen from Missouri and Il linois. And the voyageurs had stood looking on —their songs forever stilled in the increasing rumble of the wagon wheels on the Oregon Trail.
6 JOSEPH SCHAFER
Dr. Joseph Schafer was instructor and professor of history in the University of Oregon for 20 years, from 1900 to 1920. He is now superintendent of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin and editor of the Wisconsin Magazine of History. He has returned to Oregon frequently as a visiting professor of history in the University summer sessions, and, in 1933, was one of the speakers at the un veiling of the Harvey W. Scott statue in Mt. Tabor Park. He re ceived his undergraduate and graduate degrees, including that of doctor of philosophy, from the University of Wisconsin. He taught in high schools and in the North Dakota State Normal School be fore coming to Oregon. He is the author of numerous western essays, articles and addresses, and of several pamphlets and books, five of which relate to Oregon and the Pacific Slope: Government of the American People, 1901, with Frank Strong, and used for some years as a civics text in Oregon high schools; An Historical Survey of Public Education in Eugene, Oregon, pamphlet, 1901; History of the Pacific Northwest, 1905, 1918; The Pacific Slope and Alaska, 1905; The Acquisition of Oregon Territory, 1908; Jesse Applegate, Pioneer and State Builder, pamphlet, 1912; Prince Lucien Campbell, 1926. He is editor of California Letters of Lucius Fair child, 1931, and Jesse Applegate's A Day with the Cow-Column in 1843.
The Oregon Trail
From History of the Pacific Northwest, 1905
These facts tell the story of how the natural course of the Pacific Coast's development was changed by the magic of gold. The long list of American explorers, traders and mis sionaries, whose deeds and sacrifices glorify the early history of the Pacific Northwest, were largely forgotten by a nation entranced with the story of the "Forty-Niners". The far- reaching influence of Oregon as the oldest American terri tory on the Pacific Coast faded quickly from the memories of men.
The Oregon Trail was already deep worn through the sandhills along the Platte and Sweetwater, Bear River, and the Portneuf, by the wagons of the Oregon pioneers; it was lined with the crumbling bones of their cattle and marked by the graves of their dead; yet instantly, after the passage of the thronging multitudes of '49, it became the "California Trail", and to this day most men know it by no other name.
7 J. HENRY BROWN
J. Henry Brown, the old Salem historian, gathered material with fatigueless energy. His nephew, Burt Brown Barker vice-president of the University of Oregon, has a stack of manuscript and pamph lets about two feet thick that he left on the Indian wars of Oregon and Washington. He was born in Illinois on August 4, 183 1, and came to Oregon as a boy of 16, arriving in the fall of 1847. His grandfather opened the first store in Salem. He himself became by profession a printer and during his spare time a historian. "He re moved to Portland about 1880. He was a good observer and had a faculty for classifying events. Though a steady and efficient work man, he did not accumulate much of this world's goods." Harvey W. Scott said of him the day after his death in Portland on August 16, 1898: "Many a more pretentious man has deserved less than John Henry Brown. While lacking many of the qualities which dignify and adorn life, Brown still had in him the spirit and the force of a very high and worthy enthusiasm. His volume on early Oregon, while falling far below what discriminating criticism calls history, i s , nevertheless, a work of great value. I t represents an enormous amount of labor, pursued under extraordinary circumstances of disability and self-sac rifice, out of sheer love for this country and its historic past. Much of what Brown preserved might otherwise have been wholly lost. I t must be remembered, too, that Brown was, in a sense, the founder of the Oregon historical collection at the University of Oregon. His donation of early newspaper files was the first important gift to that collection."
The book referred to was Brown's Political History of Oregon, 1892. This, which he sold himself, a volume here and a volume there, to get back the cost of printing it, is now one of the hardest of Oregon books to buy, having been listed at prices as high as $62.50 in 1922. It is now practically unobtainable. His other published work was the Salem Directory for 1871, also very rare and priced by a Portland book dealer at $37.50. It contains a history of Salem. In addition to these two printed histories, he left the thick and heavily documented manuscript of the book mentioned on the Indian wars, enough to make two large volumes; and he left the manuscript of his autobiography in the Bancroft Library at Berkeley. This i s referred to in Bancroft's History o f Oregon
"James Henry Brown, an immigrant of 1847, and author of several manuscripts in my collection, in his Autobiography, MS., 20-5, a work from which I am able to gather much excellent information."
Since he called himself J. Henry Brown, people did not always get it straight what the J. stood for. Harvey W. Scott filled it out as John Henry Brown and Bancroft as James Henry Brown. It was Joseph Henry Brown.
An Expensive White Squaw
From Autobiography, Ms.
The first night we camped upon the Umatilla river a young Cayuse chief came to our camp and took a great fancy to one of my aunts, a handsome young lady of 1 8 years o f age, and said he wanted to buy her. Her mother, who sup posed i t was only a joke, said he might have her in the morning for 150 horses, and he said he would give it. The next morning he and about a dozen other Indians drove at least 250 head of Cayuse ponies up near the camp and came i n to claim his "white Squaw", as he called her. He was told that white people did not sell their women, and i t was only a joke. At this his companions commenced to laugh at him, and he became very angry and insisted upon taking her away, saying he would give the whole band. The joke now began to assume a very serious aspect, but most of the men now arrived at this very opportune moment, among them Bradshaw, who instantly knew that there was something wrong and made hasty inquiries. It was soon explained, and he decided the issue with his characteristic promptness by ordering the Indians to "puckpachu", a universal word on the plains "to leave". This they refused to do, when Brad shaw, who was a good boxer, told the men to stand by and knocked the young chief down, wheeled and knocked an other Indian down with his left hand, and pitched into the rest of them promiscuously. The young chief attempted to draw a knife, but Bradshaw sent him "to grass", as he termed it. The Indians who never can stand a fist fight, ig- nominiously fled and mounted their ponies and rode away, giving expression to some terrible language.
8 FREDERIC G. YOUNG
Professor Frederic G. Young was a little like Oliver Goldsmith in the difference between his writing and his speaking. He had a force, a grace, a fluency and often an eloquence of style which found easy outlet through his pen but which his vocal organs were not flexible enough to deliver. During a classroom lecture, sometimes his whole body would be in a gesticulatory strain, because back in his mind a sentence as perfect as one of Dr. Johnson's had been formed and was being blocked in its flow by his incapable tongue and palate. When it finally found a way out in segments and these parts were duly connected on the page of a student's notebook, it had a shining merit both of substance and of form. This forensic impediment, which was not stammering, did not keep him from being a great teacher. Many of the older graduates of the University of Oregon look back with warm appreciation to the friendliness, the intellectual stimulus and guidance, the contagion of his ever fresh curiosity and the gen erally broadened horizons they received from him.
He was born on a farm in Wisconsin on June 3, 1858. After graduating in 1878 from the State Normal School at Oshkosh, he was for six years a Wisconsin high school principal. He then spent three years in Johns Hopkins University, specializing in history and economics. In 1887 he was married to Mary Luella Packard, and the same year became vice-president and instructor in history and civics in the new South Dakota State Normal School at Madison. In 1890 he came to Portland. The old Portland High School rec ords show that he was principal from 1890 to 1894 and that he had previously had a half year's experience in Portland schools. Later he was for a year president of Albany College. In 1895 he went to the University of Oregon, where he remained until his death on January 4, 1929.
He was one of the greatest benefactors of Oregon history. He edited the Oregon Historical Quarterly from 1900 to 1928; the Commonwealth Review of the University of Oregon from 1916 to 1928; the four-volume History of Oregon by Horace S. Lyman; the Sources of the History of Oregon — including the journals of Medo- rem Crawford, Lawrence Kip, and Nathaniel J. Wyeth — from 1897 to 1899; and the Bulletin of the University of Oregon, Historical Series. And the bibliography of his own writings counts up to 120 articles between 1893 and !929-
In the late summer and early fall of 1900, at the age of 42, he did a very original and very engaging thing in the way of historical research, antedating Ezra Meeker in the idea by several years. He rode a bicycle over the Old Oregon Trail, starting from the east and coming west. In description of its vestiges he sent back two articles to the Oregonian. From these the following selection has been condensed :
Over the Old Oregon Trail on a Bicycle in 1900
North Platte, Neb., Sept. 5 . — On the morning of August 20, 1900, at Council Bluffs and Omaha, we struck the northernmost branch of the old Oregon trail. The great Mormon migration in 1 846-47 passed along this route and that was probably the first considerable use of the north side of the Platte as a thoroughfare. . . . ... we secured interviews with such leading pioneers of Omaha as Dr. George S. Miller . . . Hon. Charles Turner, Judge Doane, and Hon. Edward Rosewater. . . . From these we obtained very definite ideas of the development of this gateway of the westward movement. Mr. George H. Himes writes me that he remembers that when going through in 1853 he walked up the bluff from the Missouri River (on the successive benches of which the city of Omaha now stands). To him it seemed "an interminable stretch of green waving grass, taller than a man" and that was all that could be seen. Going west on the Union Pacific Railway 200 miles from Omaha we came to the City of Kearney, and found the Oregon trail close to the Platte, on the opposite (south) side of the river. . . . [Across the bridge and three miles to the east] we came to clumps and rows of very large cottonwood trees on the site of the old "Adobe Town", also called Kear ney City. In front of the farmhouse on this site is a fence made of part of an old pontoon bridge — one that Fremont had built, so we were told. Sitting in the shade of the cot- tonwoods, preparing dinner, we found the widow of Major Talbot, who was stationed at the fort two miles farther to the east. The trail was right alongside this old adobe town, taking up a width of some 30 rods; but, as the field had been cultivated, no traces of ruts or grooves were left. Going on two miles east we found the site of Fort Kearney, marked by similar groves of cottonwood trees, and by clearly de fined mounds and trenches, the remains of the earthworks of the fort. . . . Along the northeast side of these works are easily discernible traces of wagon ruts bearing to the north west. As these coincided with the location of the trail given several pioneers of Kearney of the original trail, we took them for such.
For 175 miles the trail keeps along up the south side of the Platte and south fork, occupying the second bench from the river. Some 70 miles above the forks of the Platte, near the site of the present station of Brule, the trail crosses the south fork and strikes almost due north to Ash Hollow, where the Oregon pioneers had their first notable experience in descending a cliff. Cliffs rise here from the north fork some 500 feet. Colonel Loring's mounted riflemen in making this descent in 1849 on their way to Oregon, in response to the call for assistance conveyed by Joe Meek, at the time of the Whitman massacre, had to have 30 men on each rope holding back their wagons, although the wheels were chained. We are told that pioneers used capstans in letting down their wagons.
In the tradition of the pioneers of this region, the more recent trails —the California, Salt Lake and Denver —are naturally more fully remembered. These followed the Oregon trail until it crossed the south fork at Brule. ...
At North Platte ... we had a most interesting interview with Washington M. Hinman, who was with the Mounted Rifle Regiment that went to Oregon in 1 849. ... A forty- mile bicycle ride from the South Platte valley at Sidney, Nebraska, brought us to Bridgeport, on the North Fork. Here, about six miles south of the river, stands the lone rock variously named Court House Rock, Stationary Tower and Ancient Ruins Bluff. Here again we were on the Oregon trail, and we traveled it continuously for a hundred miles. In many stretches the trail is the bed of the present traveled road, and through the hundred miles the road verges but little to the right or left of the original trail. It sweeps on northwestward along the bottom lands in a most impressive way. . . . Excepting where there has been special leveling for cultivation, a great trough, four feet deep and three or four rods wide, varying much, marks the course of overland travel during the 40's and 50's.
In this stretch of a hundred miles to Fort Laramie, the monotony of the weary trudge for the Oregon pioneers was no doubt much relieved by a series of interesting landmarks, Courthouse Rock, Chimney Rock, Castle and Steamboat Rocks and Scott's Bluff. . . . . . .
For miles upon miles this trip must to the pioneer have been a continuous wallow through deep sand under a fierce blazing sun. How any of the draft animals could have lived under such a strain is a mystery to one passing over this route now. The ranchers along the road are exceedingly hospitable, but the thing that arouses a feeling of injustice is that when the matter of the trail is brought up it is al ways spoken of as the "California trail" on the south side and the "Mormon trail" on the north side; never as the "Oregon trail", as which, in justice to the original makers of i t , i t should be known.
American Falls, Idaho, Sept. 12. — It is a stretch of six hundred miles from Fort Laramie to the American Falls. ... As the Sweetwater enters the Platte. . . the pioneers necessarily left the valley of the Platte and struck up that of the Sweetwater. This they followed up a hundred miles, turning to the right through South Pass. A few miles farther on they found the Pacific Springs, whose waters flow into the Green. Down the valley of the Green the trail was made. . . . This led to Fort Bridger, 150 miles to the southwest —a roundabout way. The Sublette and the Laribie cut-off . . . soon opened and led more directly to Fort Hall on the Snake. . . .
Near Fort Hall some would cross the Snake and continue in a nearly direct course west ward, skirting the foothills of the Salmon Mountains. The main stream of the migrations, however, wound along the south bank of the Snake, passing the American Falls. There was one fording of the Platte and several of the Bear and beyond the American Falls there were two fordings of the Snake. . . . The trail through this 600 miles is still largely used as a road. One is compelled to admire the practical sagacity as engineers which the pioneers, or those who were the original locaters of the trail, showed. ... At Independence Rock we came up to a man with a large family on his way to some place in Washington. He had, as a young man, passed this place in 1850. . . . They stopped to scan the crevices and chambers of the rock for his name and those of his erstwhile companions. Names in great numbers appear on the rock; but the earlier, unless deeply carved or painted in protected places, are obscured by moss and the weathering. While we found some that appear in the annals of Oregon, none that was especially familiar was read during our short stop.
We found many interesting and obliging hosts among the proprietors of ranches on the Platte and Sweetwater. . . .
To describe the old Oregon trail by these references to the aspects of its environment does not suggest its significance. The 2000-mile groove across the continent —deep and canal-like where it passes over sandy wind-swept stretches, and scarcely traceable where harder rocks come to the sur face — has its significance from the purposes and resolution of the men and women who in moving to their destination made it. These men and women were instruments in effecting the greatest single expansion ever achieved by any people. The early pioneers in undauntingly carrying out their resolution, and moving across this continental wilderness, were in an important way affecting the destinies of the world. . . .
. . . to succeeding generations of Oregonians. . . . The sur est way of toning their minds to high resolve is for them to cherish the significance of the old Oregon trail. It should be preserved as an honored symbol of what was probably the most representative American achievement.
9 JOSEPH GASTON
Joseph Gaston, a pioneer railroad builder of Oregon, was by turns a lawyer, editor, promoter, farmer and historian, with an urge towards big management and big enterprise so much in his blood that, when he finally came to turn out history in his old age, he gave the public seven large volumes in two years.
Born in Ohio in 1833, he came to Oregon in 1862, practicing law in Jacksonville and taking part in the journalism of that lively town. He preceded Orange Jacobs as editor of the Jacksonville Sentinel and preceded Samuel A. Clarke, who was to be his railroad rival, as editor of the Oregon Statesman at Salem. He later edited the Oregon Agriculturist at Salem and, in 1872, the Willamette Farmer. He was also connected with the Portland Daily Bulletin, a competitor of the Oregonian, during its last year, in 1874-75 , and edited the Pacific Farmer in 1888.
He was president of the Oregon Central Railroad Company, with a project to build the West-Side line, in strong rivalry with the other Oregon Central Railroad Company, with another historian, Samuel A. Clarke, as secretary, which wanted an East-Side line. "He followed the business of promoting and building railroads in the state from 1866 until 1880." In 1877-78 he built the narrow gauge railroad between Dayton and Sheridan. After retiring from his railroad activities, he settled on his farm at the town of Gaston, "draining and reclaiming Wappatoo Lake and converting a disease- breeding swamp into a beautiful farm." For several years this Blen- nerhasset project satisfied his inveterate craving for accomplishment. Then, in 1896, he sold the place and returned to Portland. He devoted his time to managing an orchard near Hood River and in a scheme down in Lake County that found his old promotion enthusiasm still very much alive when he was long past 70— "a great manufacturing enterprise," he called it , "the development of the soda-borax mines of Alkali Lake." He must have applied his organizing ability as well as his literary ability to the seven big and thick volumes of his histories. These are Portland, Its History and Builders, 3 volumes, 191 1; and The Centennial History o f Oregon, 4 volumes, 1912. He died on July 20, 1913, lacking four months of being 80.
"A Nursery on Wheels"
Several years ago this pioneer nursery experience of Luelling was the basis of a short story with this title in the Youth's Companion.
As "Johnny Appleseed" . . . was the fore-runner and fore-planter of apple trees in the Ohio valley in 1805, so also was Henderson Luelling in like manner the good mis sionary of all fruits to the region of Old Oregon in 1847. . . . And forty-two years after "Appleseed" commenced planting nurseries on Licking river, Ohio, Luelling took up his line of march, carrying his precious load of grafted apple sprouts twenty-five hundred miles from Salem, Iowa, to Oregon. Thus i t i s seen by the unselfish labors of these two men, and b y two long strides, apple trees were transplanted from Eastern Pennsylvania to the wilds of Western Oregon. "Appleseed" transported his cargo on a packhorse, while Luelling planted his 700 little trees in boxes twelve inches deep and wide enough to fit snugly in the bed of the wagon
and thus day after day watering the precious young scions he safely landed them after six months of watchful care on the banks of the Willamette river at the place where the town of Milwaukie now stands, and there about half a mile north of the townsite started the first tree nursery, in 1 847, west of the Rocky Mountains.
Luelling's trees were not the first fruit trees in Oregon; but they were the first grafted trees, trees that bear im proved fruit true to name. The Hudson's Bay Company had fruit at Fort Vancouver ; but it was all the produce of seeds and pits of stone fruits brought out from England in 1 825, and from its variety was at that time considered very fine, Subsequent to Luelling's other nurseries were founded; but Luelling's was substantially the foundation of all the good orchards started in the pioneer era of Oregon. In four years from planting these young trees Luelling had a few apples to sell, and sending a few boxes down to California, sold them out to the gold miners for a dollar for each apple.
10 WILLIAM H. GRAY
William H. Gray was the earliest historian of Oregon. His book antedated the two Bancroft volumes on Oregon by 16 and 18 years. As a matter of fact, when Mrs. Frances Fuller Victor first came to the state she used him as an authority, and was peeved to find out later, after she became more familiar with Oregon history, that he had steered her badly on some point. They were not good friends after that and, it will be remembered, Sidney Walter Moss did not have much use for him or his book — "Billy Gray did not suit me. His history of Oregon is one of the most untruthful articles I have ever read." The following account of his life is condensed from the biographical sketch of him in History of the Pacific Northwest by Elwood Evans : "This pioneer of pioneers, and historian of events in which he took so conspicuous a part, was born in 1810 at Fairfield, New York, of Scotch descent. While but a lad of 14, he lost his father and was apprenticed to learn the cabinetmaker's trade. . . . Upon attaining his majority he studied medicine, and being a member of the Pres byterian church, and known as a promising young man, he was sought and intrusted by the American board with the work of going as a missionary in company with Whitman and Spaulding to the Columbia river. . . . Gray's services in establishing the Provisional government were as that of originator of the scheme. . . . After the full establishment of the Provisional government, Gray went to Clatsop Plains, and in 1852 went East once more for the purpose of getting sheep for the young settlement. . . . He was early engaged in many business operations, being in California in 1849 to dig gold. We find him also in the Frazer river mines ... in the sixties. In the winter of 1860-61 he built a boat at Assooya's Lake. . . . She was brought down the Okanogan and Columbia rivers to Celilo. Mr. Gray also was one of the earliest navigators of the violent Snake river. For many years he lived at Astoria, and during part of that time was government inspector of the port. He has also greatly en joyed life in his later years on the farm of his son-in-law, Jacob Kamm, on the Klaskanine. For a number of years he was . . . prac ticing medicine on the plains, and was ever successful. . . . He has reared a large family; and his sons are known up and down the Columbia. . . . The daughters . . . have long been known in the social circles of our state. Mary Augusta Dix, ... his wife, . . . became her husband's mentor, improving his defective early education, and was his inspirer and guide in the production of his history, always sustaining his interest in and revising his work.
"Mr. Gray's history of Oregon ... is a work written in the vein of a polemic, an exoneration of the party to which he belonged, . . . and as a burning attack upon the opposite party. . . . To those who have no interest in the contests of old times, and to whom it is somewhat offensive to read of plots, charges and counter charges, the book ceases to please. . . In his political career, as well as in all his enterprises, W. H. Gray has ever been inflexible, blunt and direct, hard to manage, a good hater, but keen and faithful to his cause."
His book first ran as a series of historical articles in the Marine Gazette of Astoria and was published in 1870, with the full title: A History of Oregon, 1792- 1849, Drawn from Personal Observation and Authentic Information.
The Whitmans
From A History of Oregon, 1870
Dr. Marcus Whitman, of Rushville, New York, sent in company with Mr. Parker to explore the country. A man of easy, don't-care habits, that could become all things to all men, and yet a sincere and earnest man, speaking his mind before he thought the second time, giving his views on all subjects without much consideration, correcting and changing them when good reasons were presented, yet, when fixed in the pursuit of an object, adhering to it with unflinching tenacity. A stranger would consider him fickle and stubborn, yet he was sincere and kind, and generous to a fault, devoting every energy of his mind and body to the welfare of the Indians, and objects of the mission; seldom manifesting fears of any danger that might surround him, at times he would become animated and earnest in his argument or conversation. In his profession he was a bold practitioner, and generally successful. He was above medium height; of spare habit; peculiar hair, a portion of each being white and a dark brown, so that it might be called iron- gray; deep blue eyes and large mouth.
Mrs. Whitman, formerly Miss Narcissa Prentiss, of Prattsburg, Steuben County, New York, was a lady of re fined feelings and commanding appearance. She had very light hair, light, fresh complexion, and light blue eyes. Her features were large, her form full and round. At the time she arrived in the country, in the prime of life, she was considered a fine, noble-looking woman, affable and free to converse with all she met. Her conversation was animated and cheerful. Firmness in her was natural, and to some, especially to the Indians, it was repulsive. She had been brought up in comparative comfort, and moved in the best of religious society in the place of her residence. She was a good singer, and one of her amusements, as well as that of her traveling companions, was to teach the Doctor to sing, which she did with considerable success, — that i s , he could sing the native songs without much difficulty.
11 EDWIN VINCENT O'HARA
Brilliant, of wide social vision and with an attractive personality, Edwin Vincent O'Hara made thousands of friends among people outside his own faith while serving for 25 years as a priest in Port land and at Eugene. He was born on September 6 , 1881, near Lanes- boro, Minnesota, receiving his education in the high school of that town, in St. Thomas College and St. Paul Seminary in St. Paul, and in the Catholic University of America i n Washington. In 1917 the University of Notre Dame conferred upon him the honorary degree of LL.D. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1905, serving for the next 16 years as assistant and as rector of St. Mary's Cathedral in Portland. In 1921 he became pastor of St. Mary's at Eugene, meanwhile being active in the organization of movements of national significance, particularly the Rural Life Bureau, which he directed from 1920 to 1930. He was the first chairman of the Oregon Industrial Welfare Commission, was a volunteer chaplain of the United States Army in France and was a member of the board of directors of the American Country Life Association. He has been Bishop of Great Falls, Montana, since 1930. He is the author of two books: Pioneer Catholic History of Oregon, 1911, 1916, 1925, and The Church and the Country Community, 1927.
Two Prejudicial Incidents
From Pioneer Catholic History of Oregon, 1911
Two days before the consecration of Bishop Demers, a catastrophe occurred in Eastern Oregon which brought the Catholic missions in Oregon to the brink of ruin. We refer to the savage massacre of Dr. Whitman and his wife at the Waiilatpu Mission. . . . Mr. Spalding . . . began a systematic vilification of Bishop Blanchet and Father Brouillet. For getting all sentiments of gratitude, he accused the Bishop and his clergy of instigating the horrible massacre. So out rageous were these accusations that they aroused the deep est and intensest prejudice against the Bishop and the Catholic Church generally, and the excitement became so great that the American volunteers in leaving the Willamette Valley in pursuit of the Indians said that their first shots would be for the Bishop and his priests.
The excitement due to the murder of Dr. Whitman and the subsequent Cayuse War had subsided and the public mind was restored quiet when a new incident arose, in July, 1848, which aroused the prejudice against the Catholics to a higher pitch than before. This was the interception at The Dalles by Lieutenant Rodgers of ammunition which was be ing taken to the Rocky Mountain missions conducted by the Jesuit Fathers. Those missions were dependent largely on hunting, and each summer the Fathers in charge imported a stock of powder and balls for the winter's use. Lieutenant Rodgers reported that these arms and ammunition were to be distributed among the Indians of the interior for the ex termination of the Protestants. The state of the popular mind may be imagined when such a story would receive credence and become the source of a general anti-Catholic movement.
12 DAN E. CLARK
Dr. Dan E. Clark is professor of history in the University of Oregon and assistant director of general extension in the State Sys tem of Higher Education. Though carrying a heavy load of uni versity teaching and administration, he has kept his light burning often enough and long enough, after all the other houses are dark on Moss Street in Eugene, so that he has added a reputation as a historian of the West to a wide reputation he already had as a his torian of the Middle West before he came to Oregon. He is now completing a volume on the westward movement, which has been announced for publication in 1935 or 1936.
He was born in Ogden, Iowa, in 1884, and after finishing the Ogden High School in 1901 worked at the printing trade for two years. He later attended Morningside College and, transferring to the University of Iowa, was graduated in 1907. He received a master's degree in 1908 and a doctor's degree in 19 10, both from the University of Iowa. He was appointed to the faculty and remained until 1918 as lecturer in Western American and Iowa History and as associate editor of the Iowa Journal of History and Politics. For three years, from 19 16 to 191 9, he was a member of the board of editors of the Mississippi Valley Historical Review. He was married in 191 1 to Abigail E. White and in 1918 came to the Pacific North west. He was an executive with the Northwestern Division of the American Red Cross in Seattle from 1918 to 1921. In that year he joined the faculty of the University of Oregon, with which, and with the State System of Higher Education, he has since remained, in the history department and in the general extension division.
He has contributed numerous articles to the historical quarterlies and has written four pamphlets : One Hundred Topics in Iowa His tory, 1912, 1918; The Graduate College, 1916; The Spirit Lake Massacre, 1918, and Border Defense in Iowa, 1918. He is the author of three books in addition to the western history upon which he is now working: History of Senatorial Elections in Iowa, 1912; The Government of Iowa, 1915; and Biography of Samuel Kirkwood, 191 7. Two of his best known articles on the West are "The Ro mance and Reality of the American Frontier," 1927; and "Mani fest Destiny and the Pacific", 1932. In 1931 he was president of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association and since 1932 has been a member of the board of editors of the Pacific Historical Review.
The Doctrine of Manifest Destiny
. . . There is the doctrine of pre-ordination or inevitability governing the westward progress of the "star of empire." For some it was divine .command and the superintending guidance of Providence that furnished the irresistible impulse. Others based their prophecies on the ceaseless inward urge which had for so long been impelling Anglo- saxon peoples westward. Still others referred to the certain ty that American dominion and American enterprise must seek their natural boundaries, as water seeks its level. All these are included in the meaning of Manifest Destiny as here used.
The writer feels no necessity to pass judgment on the sincerity or motives of those who eloquently propounded the views, hereafter mentioned or quoted, in regard to the unavoidable role which America was destined to play on both shores of the Pacific. Most of these men lived long before the day of the modern cynic and debunker. If there was dross mingled with the gold in their exaltation and enthusiasm, few of them were conscious of it. America was still the land of the free and the home of the brave. At the same time it is true that there were always those who denied the force of predestinarian logic ; and at the close of the last century there were many critics who exposed selfish economic imperialism lurking behind fine-sounding phrases.
The definite formulation of the doctrine of Manifest Destiny no doubt belongs to the decade of the roaring forties. With respect to the Pacific Coast and the Pacific, however, it seems certain that the essential features of that idea were in men's minds at a considerable earlier date. Even Cole ridge in his later years was constrained to say: "The possible destiny of the United States of America, as a nation of a hundred millions of freemen, stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, living under the laws of Alfred, and speaking the language of Shakespeare and Milton, is an august conception."
13
HORACE S. LYMAN
Horace S. Lyman was the son of the Reverend Horace Lyman, pioneer Congregational minister, and the brother of William D. Lyman, author of The Columbia River: Its History, Its Myths, Its Scenery, Its Commerce.
He was born in 1855 on a farm in Polk County and was a cripple from childhood. A few years later the family moved to Forest Grove, where his father became a professor in Pacific University, from which he was graduated in 1878. "He always bore the distinction of being a good writer and showed a marked interest in the history of the state." He took a theological course in Oberlin College, entered the ministry and filled a number of pulpits. In the later period of his life he was for eight years county superintendent of schools of Clatsop County. In the summer of 1904 he had charge of the historical and educational features of the Oregon exhibit at the St. Louis fair. In the following winter, on December 22, 1904, he died in Portland. "All who knew Professor Lyman say he was a likeable man. He knew more of Oregon's early history than anyone, perhaps, in the state, and he wrote on the subject from the time of his college days. The personality of Professor Lyman was impressive, though he was a modest, retiring man." He was the author of History of Oregon: The Growth of an American State, 4 volumes, 1903. The associate board of editors were Harvey W. Scott, Charles B. Bellinger and Frederic G. Young. The latter gave much attention to editing the volumes, which were published in attractive format.
Five Thousand Oregon Argonauts
From History of Oregon, 1903
It has been estimated that between five and ten thousand Oregonians went to the California gold mines. The former figure, at least covering the period prior to 1 850, is probably nearer correct.... No small proportion remained in the Golden State and became its first citizens. But probably the larger number still considered themselves Oregonians, and remembered their homes in the Willamette or along the Columbia. Many had already become well established here, and had left their families for but a temporary absence. As a place for a permanent home they preferred Oregon. This was partly on account of climatic conditions, a land with the regular changes of seasons and abundance of moisture suiting better their customary mode of life; but still more on account of the land system, and the social and educational conditions.... In Oregon each family had secure, under the best title in the world, a square mile of land; usually embracing both prairie and woodland, and often both low lands for grain and pasture, and points of upland well suited for building sites and orchard slopes, while surrounding hills, partly wooded, still afforded range for multiplying flocks and herds....much pains had been taken to build up an orderly and enlightened society. In the centers, such as Oregon City, Salem, and Vancouver, the graces and refinements of life were sedulously cultivated....The conditions in the California mines and towns—where soon adventurers, gamblers, and every species of vagabond pressed quickly in upon the heels of the Argonauts—seemed intolerable to even rough-and-ready, and unlettered, but still law-abiding Oregonians.
It was soon apparent, too, that after the first strikes were made, the profits of the gold-digger, allowing for exhorbitant prices for living and transportation, would not be great. One, like Judge Hudson, of Oregon City, might dig out twenty-one thousand dollars' worth of dust in a few weeks; or another, like Bradbury of the Lower Columbia, might bring out a nugget weighing over six hundred dollarsworth value, and commanding over a thousand dollars price, at one stroke of the pick. But taking into account all the hardships and chances of disease, death, and demands to support vigilance committees against the lawless element, the conditions were not desirable for men who had homes and farms of their own. Great numbers, therefore, and usually with double-thick buckskin pouches well filled with dust hung around their waists under their belts, well girded also with several braces of pistols, returned as winter came on, and began at once to put into effect the improvements they had planned for home while they were washing dust in the California gulches. With the toils and perils of the way, both going and returning, we cannot linger here; but the Argonauts had all the adventures of Jason and Ulysses, and met in California all types of men, under the most favorable conditions for study of human nature. This was the great second education of the Oregon people. The California mining camp was like a metropolis. It was there that the cosmopolitan ideas and manners of the Oregonian, and even more of the Californian, originated.
14
GEORGE H. HIMES
George H. Himes, curator of the museum of the Oregon Historical Society, has for 77 years kept a diary, which is exceeded in the length of time it covers by the records of few personal memorandists among mankind. J. Q. Adams, celebrated as a prolonged diarist, tartly calendared no such sum of years. George H. Himes began his on the first of October, 1858, when he was 14, and has ever since kept it up, with almost daily entries since 1893.
He was born in Pennsylvania on May 18, 1844, and came to Oregon in 1853. His first residence was in Washington Territory, where he attended the "rate bill" schools. Since from the time he was a small boy he liked books and reading and wanted to be a printer, his father made arrangements in the summer of 1861 for him to enter a printing office as an apprentice. The following spring he came to Portland and worked for little over a year as a journeyman compositor on the Oregonian, joining the paper 1 1 months before Harvey W. Scott became its editor. In 1867 he secured a job with William D. Carter, one of the best-known job printers of the city, who had printed Margaret Jewett Bailey's Ruth Rover 13 years before. In 1868 he bought a half -interest in the business and all of it two years later. He conducted a general job shop until 1899, printing Joaquin Miller's first books and a considerable number of other early Oregon volumes as listed in a later chapter of this his tory. He was elected secretary of the Oregon Pioneer Association in 1886, and, because of his wide acquaintance with the pioneers and his long and active interest in preserving the history of the state, was appointed field secretary and curator of the Oregon Historical Society when it was organized. He began his work in January, 1899, and has since continued it, still regularly spending his days in the museum, though he is now 91. He is the author of numerous articles and joint author, with Herbert O. Lang, of History of the Willamette Valley, 1885.
The Blue Bucket Mine
It is not easy to fix the date when the name "Blue Bucket Mines" came into use. It certainly was as early as 1868, for it is positively known that Stephen H. Meek, the leader of the party of immigrants in 1845 over the route after wards referred to as "Meek's cut-off", conducted thirty men that year along that trail in search of the mine of that name, without success.
According to a statement given me by William F. Helm many years ago, whose father, mother, five brothers and one sister and himself were members of the Meek party, "blue bucket" originated in this way: The Helm wagons, yokes and many of the camp utensils, including several buckets, were painted blue. At one camp on a tributary of the John Day River, numerous small yellow pebbles were found along the water's edge and among the grass roots. An attempt was made to catch some fish, but the current being very swift, the effort failed. Then W. G. T'Vault, Thomas R. Cornelius and James Terwilliger, the latter a blacksmith, conceived the idea of using one of the bright pebbles, and, finding it soft, pounded it thin and used it as a sinker on the fish lines. Others did the same. At one of the camps where an experience occurred of the kind here related, two blue buckets were abandoned, the Helm family having no further use for them.
None of the company had any idea of gold at this time. Their minds were fully occupied by the effort to get out of the wilderness, as their situation was very serious. At length the party reached The Dalles and went down the Columbia River on rafts, all settling in the Willamette Valley.
It will be remembered that gold was discovered in California ... in 1848.... Soon afterwards a number of the adults of the Meek party of 1845 went to the California mines, and they then believed that the "pebbles" that had been used as sinkers on fish lines were gold.
Mr. Helm went to the vicinity of Canyon City in 1 863, soon after the gold discovery of that year, and always in sisted that there, or in the region near there, was the local ity where the gold was found in 1 845. That was the opinion of Thomas R. Cornelius also, who, at the time of my first acquaintance with him, in 1866, was one of the substantial citizens of Washington County, Oregon.
15 LESLIE M. SCOTT
Leslie M. Scott, son of Harvey W. Scott and vice-president of the Oregonian Publishing Company, spent much time during 12 years in compiling and editing his father's editorials for the History of the Oregon Country, with such productive additions as to make him in high degree a collaborator. He also compiled Religion, Theol ogy and Morals and Shakespeare from Harvey W. Scott's writings, and three annual volumes, from 1922 to 1925, of the Proceedings of the Masonic Grand Lodge of Oregon. In much original writing for magazines and quarterlies on the history of Oregon and the Pacific Northwest, he has joined a comprehensive view and a painstaking attitude of accuracy. He has been a director of the Oregon Historical Society since 1913, serving also as vice-president from 1914 to 1918, as treasurer from 1926 to 1931, and, for some time following the death of Frederic G. Young, as editor of the Quarterly.
He was born in Portland on February 18, 1878. He was gradu ated from the old Portland High School in 1896 and from the Uni versity of Oregon in 1899. Frederic G. Young was one of his pro fessors at Eugene, and he remembers the proof sheets of the journals of Wyeth, Kip, and Medorem Crawford, ready for attention in a corner of the classroom and seeming to get on noticeably in that place of academic distractions. Mr. Scott was a reporter on the Oregonian until 1904 and associate editor until 19 10. He was married in 1906 to Elizabeth Coleman of Portland. He has served as United States Marshal for Oregon and as the chairman of the State Highway Commission.
Beaver Money
Beaver money, $5 and $10 gold pieces, coined in 1849
at Oregon City by a company of pioneers, was in circulation 
J. Henry Brown on Oregon Historians
Called "beaver" because the coins bore the stamp of that fur-bearing animal, in imitation, by the way, of an emblem on the fur trade tokens of the NorthWest Company and the seal of the territorial government of 1849–59, this money was the product of pioneer necessity and ingenuity, at a time when the new settlement was using, as media of exchange, beaver skins, wheat, bills, drafts and orders, gold dust and silver coins of Mexico and Peru, all of changing and uncertain value.
The beaver stamp certified that the coins were pure gold, 130 or 260 grains each. Although the United States Government has sole right under the constitution to coin money, yet at that time when the Government was not exercising the right on the Pacific Coast, the pioneers were not molest ed. California men were also stamping gold coins at the same time. Gold dust (nuggets and fine particles) came to Oregon from California in exchange for farm products. The dust was of varying values, due to intrinsic differences, sand and tricky admixtures. Many persons suffered loss in trade. Few had scales to weigh the dust, and few could determine the value. After the beaver coins appeared, dust rose from $11 to $16 an ounce, because of the honest market for gold supplied by the pioneer coiners. The "mint" was operated by the Oregon Exchange Company, a voluntary association, not incorporated. The company made little or no profit. . . .
The pure gold quality of the coins made them 8 or 10 percent more valuable than gold coins of governmental mintage, which contain some 10 percent alloy. In consequence the beaver coins soon disappeared from circulation} were melted into bullion} were taken to the mint at San Francisco and recoined. The premium on the $5 beaver coin was 50 cents, and on the $10 coin, $1.
16
ELWOOD EVANS
When Elwood Evans died in Olympia on January 29, 1898, at the age of 70, the following statement was published in regard to his historical work: "Judge Evans wrote numerous papers on historical subjects, all of which showed an intimate knowledge of the state's history. A number of years ago he wrote a history of the Northwest, which had a large sale. A few years ago, he wrote a condensed history, which was designed, it is understood, as a text book for schools in the Northwest. He left numerous manuscripts and a large amount of data on historical subjects which will be almost invaluabe to future historians. " He never lived in what is now Oregon but he was indeed thoroughly familiar with the old Oregon Country from prominent identification with its events for nearly half a century of its early period. In 1851, at the age of 23, he came from Philadelphia to Olympia as collector of customs of the Puget Sound District. He began the practice of law at Olympia in 1853. He served in the Indian war of 1855-56, was clerk of Thurston County in 1856, and was appointed secretary of the territory by President Lincoln, acting as governor much of the year from 1865 to 1866. He continued to be active in public affairs until the late 80's. His History of the Pacific Northwest: Oregon and Washington was published in Portland in 1889, in two large volumes bound in red leather and red cloth, and is the best illustrated of all the Oregon histories. He had considerable assistance, including some from Judge Carey, but it was largely his work. With Edmond S. Meany he wrote State of Washington: A Brief History of the Discovery, Settlement and Organization of Washington, the Evergreen State, 1893. He was also author of half a dozen pamphlets, including two that had reference to Oregon: Oration, July 4th, 1865, 16 pages, Portland Committee on Investigations, 1865; Historical Review of the Oregon Question, 1871.
Early Travel Between Jacksonville and Portland
From History of the Pacific Northwest, 1889
On the 15th day of September, 1860, the first daily mail, carried by four-horse coaches, arrived in Portland, Oregon, from Sacramento, California. This was the inauguration of a new era upon the Pacific Coast, and especially for Southern Oregon. Before this time the mail came semi-occasionally; and persons desiring to travel the route from Jacksonville to Portland were compelled to make the trip on horse or mule back, making an average of twenty miles a day. The stopping places were well known; and each day's drive was managed so that they could arrive at some favorable hostelry. At each of these there was ample provision for the inner man, with plenty of horse feed; and, during the rainy season; a roaring fire in an ample fireplace furnished the opportunity to dry the saturated clothing of the tired traveler. The stage line changed all this... Travelers had no longer to provide themselves with a riding animal to make a day's journey. They had only to provide themselves with a ticket from the stage agent. . . .
The stage soon became an institution in the country that not only furnished a market for a large quantity of hay and grain, but was the only means of communication with the outside world. It soon became the custom of the whole male population of a station to meet the stage upon its arrival. At the blast of the driver's horn, all the business men rushed to receive their packages by mail or express; while the balance of the crowd waited to meet some friend or hear the latest news. The drivers were universally polite and obliging; and they seemed to defy the weather as if made of cast iron. . . . So strong a hold had the stage company upon the people of Southern Oregon that there was a sigh of regret even when they were superseded by the railroad company.
17
RICHARD G. MONTGOMERY
Richard Gill Montgomery is a grandson of J. K. Gill, pioneer Portland bookseller, and a great-grandson of Dr. W. Willson, who came out in 1837 to join the Jason Lee Mission, and Chloe A. Clark, who arrived on the Lausanne in 1840. His father, William A. Montgomery, is present head of the J. K. Gill Company.
He was born in Portland on February 13, 1897. He was graduated from Lincoln High School and, in 1919, from the University of California, later doing some work in the University of Oregon Medical School, with the intention of becoming a physician. He abandoned this plan and spent the year from 1921 to 1922 at the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration. He has since been associated with the J. K. Gill Company, first as advertising manager and now as assistant manager. He was married in 1926 to Dorothy Haradon. His literary activity has been in three fields: as a conductor of one of the popular radio book programs, as a plat form lecturer on Dr. McLoughlin and other topics, and as the writer of two well-known books. He has given his radio talks on books over KGW and KEX since 1914. He is on the lecture staff of World Celebrities, with five subjects, one of which is an account of his experiences in writing his biography of Dr. John McLoughlin. He is the author of Pechuck: Lorne Knight's Adventures in the Arctic, 1931, and The White-Headed Eagle: John McLoughlin, Builder of an Empire, 1934.
Dr. John McLoughlin and His Accounts Receivable
From The White-Headed Eagle, 1934
Many are the stories which have come down to us from old settlers who remember the White-Headed Eagle as a patriarchal figure in the early days of Oregon City. . . .
Toward the last it became difficult for him to curb his anger when he chanced to meet some settler who persistently refused to pay even though he could well afford to do so. Up would go his stout cane in righteous indignation, but, in a moment, he would catch himself, utter a scarcely audible "God forgive me," and hurry on his way. His granddaughter recalled that he used to segregate these old accounts into groups, according to their possibility of collection, and enter them in leather-bound blank books of various colors. He fell into the habit of spending long, weary hours over these grim reminders of his sorrow. Sometimes, after a whole evening of such torture, his massive white head would nod, and, leaning over his desk, he would sob loudly and unashamed.
Like most women of her race, Margaret became very stout as she grew older. The doctor continued to treat her with great deference, and he was quick to resent any slight shown her by the colonists. If one of them chanced to enter her presence without removing his hat, the chivalrous old gentleman would rebuke him severely, no matter who he happened to be. "Your manners, sir," he would blurt out, "your manners, before ladies!"
18
CHESTER A. FEE
Chester A. Fee runs a big wheat and bean ranch in Umatilla County and when the demands of those numerous acres let up for a day or longer he gets his rest by writing poetry and history at his home in Pendleton—the town in which he was born, the son of Judge James A. Fee of the Eastern Oregon Judicial District. He spent four years in Pendleton High School and another four in the University of Oregon, being that rare combination of a prominent athlete and a major in the classics. "Said adieu to the campus with a sheepskin and a major in Greek. Skinned mules and punched cattle on my father's ranch in the wilds until the war." He entered a military training camp and was commissioned a first lieutenant. After his discharge from the service he went to the law school of the University of California long enough to decide he did not want to be a lawyer. Later he became coach and assistant physical education supervisor in the University of California High School at Oakland and married Sara Campbell Robinson, an interior decorator of San Francisco. He next served as director of physical education at Taft, California, and as a field executive of the Boy Scouts of America. Then he quit physical education and went into journalism and advertising. For a while he was special writer for the Los Angeles Times and other papers and syndicates. After that he was manager of a direct-mail selling association in Los Angeles and advertising manager of the Seaside Oil Company of California, until he returned to Pendleton to farm and write. He is author of Rimes o' Round-Up, a book of poems, 1935; and Chief Joseph: The Biography of a Great Indian, 1935.
Chief Joseph's Courtship
From Chief Joseph: The Biography of a Great Indian, 1935
But Young Joseph had seen her, and set his heart like all true lovers. What matter if she lived at Lapwai, and he in Wallowa. Such trifles as eighty-mile rides up and down mountains and swimming of Snake River could not dampen the ardor of one who felt himself of such promise he would not enlist aid in his love making. So for two or three years Young Joseph made the ride and swam the river until the trail was fairly well worn to the lodge of Whis-kas-tet. But the obstacles he faced there were much more difficult. A man had little opportunity proving himself more than persistent in standing about a tepee in the night serenading his love with a flageolet. During the day there were no meetings— the luscious moonlight wasted itself at night: Joseph could only hope his choice stood in the crowd, with heart a-flutter while he performed some feat of daring upon the parade ground, or surpassed some other youth of promise in the hunt, in games, at horse racing, or in javelin or bow and arrow proficiency. -
But even eternal vigilance must sometime relax. Joseph knew this and waited, incessantly keeping the entire family of the lodge awake with his flageolet playing, until he wore their vigil out and forced her parents to relent for want of sleep.
There came the time at last when Joseph met his chosen maiden under the alders along the creek called “Laaps”, the “Place of the Butterflies”. A breath-taking moment of sudden meeting; a hopeful modesty on the part of the girl; the held-in-check enthusiasm of the youth; and then, without warning, those sweet words of love; a proposal and an acceptance. Joseph had found a bride.
19 FRED LOCKLEY
For a third of a century Fred Lockley has been extracting Oregon history from people who have lived it in one way or another in a wide range of categories—“ bull-whackers, muleskinners, pioneers, prospectors, ' 49ers, Indian fighters, trappers, ex-barkeepers, authors, preachers, poets and near poets, and all sorts and conditions of men and women.” These have been his original sources, supplemented by manuscripts, pamphlets, early newspapers, photographs, letters and old books, which, like a modern Bancroft, he has adventurously searched out from all over the country, once crawling under the foundations of the old Umatilla House in pursuit of the records of that famous pioneer hotel.
He is a native of Kansas, where he was born on March 19, 1871. He came to Oregon by mule team at the age of 9. He received his education at Oregon State College and Willamette University. His profession has been journalism. He was field editor of the Pacific Homestead, "riding on a lineback buckskin pony all over Oregon. " He was part owner of the East Oregonian at Pendleton. He then came to Portland to be associated with an ambitious magazine publishing enterprise, the Pacific Monthly, serving later as general manager. He has been a member of the editorial staff of the Oregon Journal since 1910. Among his pamphlets are Across the Plains by Prairie Schooner; Captain Sol Tethero, Wagon Train Master; To Oregon by Ox-Team in 1847, and Talks with Edwin Markham. He is the author of four books: Oregon Folks, 1927, History of the Columbia River from The Dalles to the Sea, 3 volumes, 1928; Oregon's Yesterdays, 1928; Oregon Trail Blazers, 1929.
Ghost Cities of the West
From Oregon Trail Blazers, 1929
The road to Oregon's yesteryears lies not along the main travelled highways—to go back to the era of the pack train and stage coach, you must follow the dirt roads to the back of the beyond country. At the far end of some deeply-rutted, water-washed, overgrown roadway, you will occasionally happen on what once was a ghost city of the west. Many of these ghost cities today are but memories, while in others a few grey-bearded pioneers still linger to dream of the glory that once was theirs. For more than 40 years I have rambled over the west on horseback or afoot, by stage and river steamer, by train and by auto, visiting the sites of the cities that once were, and interviewing the men and women who helped make history in the long-gone days. Where to day is Mountsylvania, which of old time was a few miles to the westward of Milwaukie? It waxed and waned and passed away. Eldorado and Malheur City, once thriving mining camps, today are pasture land. Sailors' Diggings has lapsed back to nature. Pacific City, located near the mouth of the Columbia, once aspired to be the metropolis of the Oregon country. It is no more. Monticello, on the Cowlitz, is but a memory. Santiam City on the Santiam River, a few miles above its mouth, has passed from the memory of man. What of Cincinnati, which once aspired to be the state capital? It too, has passed. Zena and Bloomington, Jennyopolis and Marysville, Starr's Point and Calapooya, Umpqua City and the Dardanelles live only in the memory of the pioneers.
Old time mining camps where once the busy, bearded, red-shirted miners shoveled pay dirt into their rockers, long toms or sluice boxes, are now but windrows of water-washed stones along the creek bed, where cabins once stood. Kerbyville, now shortened to Kerby, no longer echoes to the midnight revelry of prospectors and miners. Like scores of other camps that in the lusty heydey of their youth grew like a green bay tree, Kerbyville saw its transient population drift to other camps.
Jacksonville, at one time the commercial metropolis of Southwestern Oregon, is today like some old pioneer who sits serene and untroubled by the door of his cabin watching the day's afterglow fade to twilight while he looks back in memory to the old days. . . .
20
LEWIS A. McARTHUR
Lewis Ankeny McArthur, geographic historian, was born at The Dalles on April 27, 1883, the descendant of two families prominently connected with the history and development of Oregon, and pioneers of its culture. His father, Judge L. L . McArthur was a member of the Oregon Supreme Court. His mother, Harriet Nesmith McArthur, is author of Recollections of the Rickreall. His grandfather on his mother's side was Colonel James W. Nesmith, who has been considered in the chapter on early orators.
He moved with his parents to Portland in 1890 at the age of seven. He was graduated from the old Portland Academy in 1902 and from the University of California in 1908, his attendance at Berkeley being interrupted by several months' experience as a reporter on the Portland Telegram and Oregonian. While a student he was editor of the Daily Californian. In 1921 the University of Oregon conferred upon him an honorary degree of master of arts.
For two years he worked for the Oregon Electric Railway. Since 1910 he has been with the Pacific Power & Light Company and is now vice-president and general manager. He was married in 1914 to Mary Lawrence Hewett of Portland. They have four children. He has served as director of the Oregon Historical Society and of the Portland Library Association, and since 1914 has been secretary of the Oregon Geographic Board. He is a book collector and has built up an extensive library relating to Oregon history, natural science and maps. He has been a contributor to many different publications of articles on Oregon history, geography and geodesy, and his contour map of the state of Oregon is used by bureaus of the federal government. He is author of Oregon Geographic Names, 1928, reference to which has previously been made in the chapter on the literature of the Indians.
Harney Lake
From Oregon Geographic Names, 1928
Harney Lake, Harney County. The first written information about Harney Lake is contained in Peter Skene Ogden's journals of his third Snake expedition, published in the Oregon Historical Quarterly for June, 1910. On October 29, 1826, when the expedition was not far from what is now known as Harney Valley, Ogden wrote that Thomas McKay, who had been sent on in advance, rejoined the party and reported the discovery of "a country of rivers and lakes, one of the latter the water is salt." The entry for Tuesday, November 1, is: "At sunset we reached the lakes. A small ridge of land an acre in width divides the fresh water from the salt lakes. These two lakes have no intercourse. The fresh water has an unpleasant taste. 1 mile wide 9 long. In this [Malheur] lake discharges Sylvailles River and 2 small forks; but it has no discharge. Salt Lake at its south end is 3 miles wide. Its length at present unknown to us but appears to be a large body of saltish water. All hands gave it a trial but none could drink it. . . ." Subsequent entries give further information about the lakes. There is no doubt in the mind of the writer that what Ogden called Salt Lake is the Harney Lake of today, and the fresh water lake is Malheur Lake. During certain stages Malheur Lake dis charges into Harney Lake, with the result that Harney Lake gradually tends to get more alkaline. T . C. Elliott, who edited the journals, is slightly confused about the lakes, and in a footnote states that Harney is not salt, which is incorrect. J. J. Donegan of Burns advises the writer that in the days of emigrations Harney and Malheur were known as Bitter lakes. The Indian name for Harney Lake is said to have been Tomowama. Harney Lake received its present name because of its location in Harney Valley.
21
ROBERT H. DOWN
Robert H. Down was born in Silverton and attended one of the interesting early schools of Oregon—Liberal University at Silverton. He was graduated from Mt. Angel College in 1904, and from the University of Oregon with a bachelor of laws degree in 1909 and a master of arts degree in 1920. Though admitted to the bar in 1908, he turned to teaching instead of law as a profession. He was superintendent of schools at Lebanon for the year 1919-20 and has been head of the history department of Franklin High School in Portland since 1921. He is joint author, with R. C. Clark and George Verne Blue, of History of Oregon, 1925; and is author of History of the Silverton Country, 1926; three chapters— “History of Marion County”, “Beginning of Schools and Churches” and “Churches in the Willamette Valley”—in Clark's History of the Willamette Valley, 1927; and “The Rural Church in Marion County”, Ms. He is now gathering material for a life of Homer Davenport.
The Silverton Country in Oregon Literature
Joab Powell
Joab Powell used to preach in the old schoolhouse up Water Street in Silverton.... There was a fireplace at each end of the long room, which afforded the only light and in the semi-darkness the preacher made a grotesque figure as he arose to address his congregation. He wore home-made jean trousers “four feet across the seat. ” As a preliminary to preaching he placed in his mouth a chew of tobacco. When this was sufficiently moistened, the juice was deposited on the floor, a ponderous foot run through twice or thrice, and Joab, the inimitable, was off on a powerful and eloquent discourse.... People came from miles around to hear him, especially the young men, who enjoyed standing outside, chuckling and tittering over the preacher's numerous racy parables and metaphors. He was a great exhorter and when his appeals failed to obtain a response, h e often remarked, “There i s not much rejoicing i n Heaven tonight.”
He was possessed o f a large frame, was coarse and sloven l y i n his personal habits, about five feet ten inches i n height and would weigh 250 pounds.
When Fielding McClaine lived at the old James Smith place, southeast of town, the Reverend Joab was a frequent visitor there, no doubt attracted by the bountifully spread table, for he was a great eater, though Mr. and Mrs. McClaine themselves were a lovable and hospitable couple. In deed, in proof o f the former assertion that the reverend was largely attracted b y the prospect o f ample culinary delights, i t has been asserted that his stops a t McClaine's were largely impelled b y the expectation o f cabbage for breakfast. De clining t o trust i n the Lord t o provide this favorite dish, h e arose early i n the morning and approached the lady o f the house, saying, “Sarah, wouldn’t i t b e just a s handy for you to cook cabbage as potatoes for breakfast?” Reassured, he went into the garden and plucked the largest head to be found.
Abigail Scott Duniway
I n the essay i n this book o n Mrs. Duniway, author o f Captain Gray's Company, her husband was referred t o a s a Clackamas Coun t y farmer, and that reference i s correct. Though socially tributary t o Silverton rather than t o Oregon City, their ranch was across Butte Creek i n Clackamas County.
Benjamin C. Duniway was born in . . . Illinois . . . i n ... 1830. He arrived i n Oregon i n September, 1850. His wife was Abigail Scott, whom h e married i n Yamhill Coun ty, August 2 , 1853. The Duniway donation land claim con sisted o f 320 acres across Butte Creek from the Silverton Country, lying i n township five south, one east. I n a n early day Mr. Duniway did carpentering. William Rankin Mc Cord, who was related b y marriage t o the Duniways and Scotts and who was i n early times a resident o f the Silverton Country, has supplied the author with much interesting ma terial. According t o Mr. McCord, Harvey W. Scott, the distinguished journalist o f the Portland Oregonian, lived for a time with the Duniways and worked with Mr. Mc- Cord, notably on the Abiqua Church, and on the Rock Creek Church in Clackamas County.
Edwin Markham
It was no doubt the location of this homestead which gave rise to the report in the spring of 1935 that the poet was born on Abiqua Creek, causing the Oregon City chamber of commerce to engage in extensive geographical research to find his exact birthplace in that town. In any controversy, a literary historian could not help being in favor of a commercial club that would go to so much trouble over a poet, but, in view of the back and forth movements of the family as described by Mr. Down, it is easy to see how the report could have got started.
Samuel Markham, who arrived in Oregon on December 6, 1 847, later settled on a donation claim on upper Abiqua at the Dunigan Bridge. With his wife he owned consider able property in Oregon City, and the family in the early 50's divided the time between Oregon City and their residence on the Abiqua farm. Edwin Markham, a son, is one of America's most distinguished poets.
Samuel Allen
In connection with The Prairie Flower it will be remembered that Charles L. Camp, the historian, cited as part of his evidence against Moss' authorship the fact that in the copy of the book in the Bancroft Library the words "S. and A. Allen" are written in pencil on the title page in substitution of the printed name of Emer son Bennett. "Perhaps it should be added," said Mr. Camp, "that there was a Samuel Allen in Oregon in 1847." So there was, but as portrayed by Mr. Down does he sound much like the author of a novel ?
Samuel Allen was born in East Tennessee on July 21, 1805. He was a son of William Allen, a soldier of the War of 1812. .. . in 1826 he married Sarah, a daughter of Dan iel Benson, a native of Tennessee. He removed to Piatt County, Missouri, in 1836, and thence, in 1847 crossing the plains to Oregon, . . . spending the winter of 1 847-8 in the cabin of John Patterson, where the family was threat ened with death by the Klamath Indians, out of which threats and the open defiance of the Indians toward the settlers grew the troubles that culminated in the Battle of the Abiqua, in which Samuel Allen took an active part.
Sam. L. Simpson
Samuel Leonidas Simpson was the most illustrious of the three families of that name that settled in the Silverton Country. His father, Benjamin Simpson, . . . arrived in Oregon in September, 1846. The Benjamin Simpson dona tion land claim was in sections nine and ten in township nine south and three west, on which the family settled Septem ber 27, 1853. . . . Benjamin Simpson was twice married. By his first wife he had two children, John and Elsira Jane. By his second marriage, Sylvester C, Samuel L., Louisa, Frances M. and Elnorah. . . . Sylvester C. Simpson . . . was the first superintendent of public instruction in Oregon. . . . W. T. Burney, who married a daughter of Benjamin Simpson, wrote the introduction to Simpson's poems, The Gold-Gated West. . . . He was at one time registrar of the United States Land Office at Oregon City.
Here in the Waldo Hills, Samuel L. Simpson spent some of the most interesting years of his youth, attending the district school, reveling in the natural beauties of the region, gazing long hours at majestic Hood and absorbing the lore of the country round, so much of which is reflected in his poetry. . . . He is peculiarly the poet of the Silverton Country, for many of his poems breathe out the very air of hill and vale and mountain and stream which make this pleasant land.
Homer Davenport
There was little social or collective thinking in pioneer times. Whatever success came to men was the result of the force of circumstances rather than as a reward for preconceived plans and directed energy. Such was the case of Homer Davenport, who broke through the pioneer environ ment to find success outside. He never doubted, however, what he owed to his Silverton home and ancestry and re membered with gratitude the sterling qualities of the pio neers and of the community which reared him. Other Sil- vertonians who have achieved success in art or literature are Frank Bowers, a cousin of Homer Davenport, and, like him, a cartoonist of note. In drama, Margaret Mayo, a Sil- verton girl, is well known as a playwright. Marguerite Fischer, another Silverton girl, was for many years starred in the moving pictures.
22 J. B . HORNER
Dr. J. B. Horner was a personal historian who marked the first advance from the pioneer recollectors. He tried his best to get an aloof and unified view, but the events and persons that he knew first hand still unduly affected the proportion and emphasis of his work. He deserves great credit, however, for his interest and labors in a wholly neglected field. He was the first and for 36 years has re mained the only literary historian of Oregon. The Indian wars, Champoeg, the missionaries, the railroads, and all the familiar topics, have been done over and over again, but, with the exception of a few articles by Frances Fuller Victor, no one took the trouble to give an account of Oregon's literary accomplishments until he pro duced his first thin little book on the subject in 1899. This was fol lowed in 1902 by his 300-page illustrated edition, which, with the reinforcement of his lectures and articles, has done a tremendous amount of good. Would that all books could have such a beneficent record. It was the first Oregon history to deal entirely with a cul tural theme. Its importance is not that he failed to do it better but that he did it at all.
He was born at La Grande, Texas, on August 4, 1856. His father was a pioneer circuit rider, with whom he came to Walla Walla in 1862. He attended school at Whitman Seminary and Blue Mountain University, and was graduated from Philomath College, where he probably first knew Louis Albert Banks, whose fecundity he re corded to the full extent of 55 flowery titles, though there is not a complete bibliography of another author in his book. He was prin cipal of schools at Albany, Roseburg and Brownsville, and came to Oregon State College in 1892 as professor of English and literature. Ten years later he was made registrar and professor of history. When he died on September 14, 1933, he was 77 years old and had been on the faculty of Oregon State College for 41 years. He was in wide demand as a speaker, especially at pioneer meetings, and was per sonally acquainted with hundreds of people all over the state, who held him in warm affection. In addition to his articles and numerous addresses, he wrote the following books: Oregon Literature, 1899, 1902; Oregon: Her History, Her Great Men, Her Literature, 191 9; A Short History of Oregon, 1924; Days and Deeds in the Oregon Country, 1929; Oregon History and Early Literature, 1931.
Oregon's Most Prolific Author
From Oregon Literature, Second Edition, 1902
What good can come out of Nazareth? has been answered again. From infancy to childhood, and from childhood to the boy preacher of sixteen, we find him in Oregon. Charles Parkhurst, the great divine and reformer, says of him: "Louis Albert Banks, after leaving Philomath College, com menced to preach the gospel in Washington Territory, and many were converted. From seventeen to twenty-one, he taught school and studied law, being admitted to practice in the courts. He received his first regular appointment from Bishop Gilbert Haven, and was stationed in Portland, Oregon. Fearless as a reformer, in his pulpit, he has been shot down by the infuriated saloonist, and mobbed by the anti-Chinese rioters." . . .
Mr. Banks's books and sermons may fitly be termed "the wild flowers of Oregon", for he has culled the lambs' tongue, the rhododendron, the wild lilac, the field lily, the honey suckle, and the wild grape, and taken this handful of wild flowers from the hills and valleys of Oregon and woven them into beautiful sermons and books —thus furnishing a delightful source of help to thousands of men and women on both continents. Indeed, his style may be defined as the wild flowers of Oregon so delicately transplanted from the mild atmosphere of the West into the conservatories of the frigid East that they have lost none of their original fra grance or beauty. . . .
From Oregon: Her History, Her Great Men, Her Literature, 1919
Louis Albert Banks, D. D., has written more books than any other Oregonian. He was born near Corvallis, Novem ber 12, 1855. Banks pursued a course in liberal arts at Philomath College; and some years after entering the ministry he attended Boston University and Mount Union College. He has been pastor of some of the leading Methodist Episcopal churches in this country; was prohibition candidate for governor of Massachusetts in 1893; has done much effective evangelistic work; and is now campaigning for nation-wide prohibition. His sermons have been read by more people than have the sermons of any other American clergy man since the death of Talmage. He is the author of fifty-five books, . . . They are:
Live Boys in Oregon, The People's Christ, The White Slaves, The Revival Quiver, Anecdotes and Morals, Common Folks' Religion, Honeycomb of Life, Heavenly Tradewinds, The Christ Dream, Christ and His Friends, Paul and His Friends, The Saloon Keeper's Ledger, The Fisherman and His Friends, Seven Times Around Jericho, Hero Tales from Sacred Stories, The Christ Brotherhood, Heroic Personalities, The Unexpected Christ, Immortal Hymns and Their Story, Sermon Stories for Boys and Girls, The Christian Gentleman, John and His Friends, My Young Man, Immortal Songs of Camp and Field, The Great Sinners of the Bible, A Year's Prayermeeting Talks, Chats with Young Christians, A Manly Boy, David and His Friends, The Lord's Arrows, Twentieth Century Knighthood, Fresh Bait for Fishers of Men, Poetry and Morals, Hidden Wells of Comfort, The Great Saints of the Bible, Unused Rainbows, The Motherhood of God, The King's Stewards, Hall of Fame, Life of T. DeWitt Talmage, Youth of Famous Americans, Windows for Sermons, The Healing of Souls, The Great Portraits of the Bible, Soul-Winning Stories, Thirty-one Revival Sermons, The Religious Life of Famous Americans, The Great Promises of the Bible, Capital Stories of Famous Americans, Spurgeon's Illustrative Anecdotes, Sermons Which Have Won Souls, The Problems of Youth, The World's Childhood, The Great Themes of the Bible, The Sunday Night Evangel, A Summer in Peter's Garden.
Doctor Banks' residence is in Brookline, a suburb of Boston. [He later moved to Roseburg, and increased the number of his books to 65. He died in 1933.]
23
E. RUTH ROCKWOOD
As C. W. Smith, of the University of Washington Library, is bibliographer for the whole Pacific Northwest, so Miss E. Ruth Rockwood, reference librarian of the Portland Library Association, is bibliographer for Oregon and is an historian of books. She was born in Rensselaer Falls, New York, and came to Oregon in 1883. For a while she attended the old Portland High School, later the Portland Academy, and was graduated from Bryn Mawr in 1900. She has been head of the reference department of the Portland Library since 1902 and in cooperation with Miss Anne M. Mulheron has built up one of the finest collections of Pacific Northwest books, newspapers and documents in existence. She has made the following compilations: the Portland Library's part of Smith's Pacific Northwest Americana and of the Union List of Periodicals, and the Oregon part of the Union List of Newspapers; Books on the Pacific Northwest for Small Libraries, 1923; Checklist of Oregon State Documents 1843-1925, Ms.
Books About Oregon
From the Preface to Books on the Pacific Northwest for Small Libraries, 1923
Following were some of the higher prices for 1922 as listed by Miss Rockwood : J. Henry Brown : Brown's Political History of Oregon — $40 to $62.50; John Meares: Voyages Made in the Years 1788 and 1789, from China to the Northwest Coast of America — $15; Alexander Ross: Fur Hunters of the Far West —$25 to $35; E. W. Wright: Lewis and Dryden's Marine History of the Pacific Northwest — $7 to $10; J. Quinn Thornton: Oregon and California in 1848 —$15 to $20; Pacific Monthly, volumes 1-16—$60 to $75; Oregon Native Son, volumes 1-2 — $50 to $75.
Since the publication of the new edition of the Checklist of Pacific Northwest Americana, compiled by Mr. C. W . Smith, a demand has come from the smaller libraries for a list of books for purchase. This list has been prepared in response to that demand and, like the Checklist, has been sponsored by the Pacific Northwest Library Association.
It has been compiled with the needs in mind of the library of from ten to twenty thousand volumes. I have thought it best to make it rather inclusive that it may admit of some selection, and serve as a guide to the more important books, starring those titles essential for even the smallest libraries. I have listed a few very rare and almost unobtainable items because they might possibly be found in the possession of old residents who would be willing to place them in their local libraries. The thought has been to provide as far as possible for a general working collection, meeting the wants of the high school or college student, rather than of the research worker. In accordance with this plan, a few of the best or most easily obtainable books on the various phases of the history and description of the Pacific Northwest have been chosen, based upon experience at the reference desk. Wherever a modern edition was available, especially one with notes, that has been given in preference to the original edition, and books in print have been selected wherever possible. If only an original edition of an important work was available, an effort has been made to give the range of prices at which the book has been offered for sale within the last few years. Prices given without note have been taken from the 1922 publishers' trade lists. With the changing conditions, however, none of the prices can be considered more than approximately correct. The annotations have been designed to show the scope of the book rather than to be critical in character.
24
OLOF LARSELL
The writings and research of Dr. Olof Larsell, professor of anatomy in the University of Oregon Medical School, are an excellent example of the professional approach to history that has been referred to in an earlier part of this chapter. He was born in Sweden on March 13, 1886, and came to the United States at the age of five. He was graduated in 1910 from McMinnville College, and received his master's degree in 1914 and his doctor's degree in 1918 from Northwestern University. He taught on the faculties of Linfield College, Northwestern University and the University of Wisconsin, before coming to the University of Oregon Medical School, where in addition to notable contributions in research in his technical field, he has stimulated a productive interest in regional medical history. The group of advanced medical students he has organized to discuss and study it in a medical history club is unique among writing and among history organizations. He is the author of "An Outline His tory of Medicine in the Pacific Northwest", 1932; and The Development of Medical Education in the Pacific Northwest, n. d.
The First Medical School in Oregon
Willamette University was founded in Salem in 1842, . . . In 1865, . . . another step of significance to the welfare of the state was taken in launching, under the auspices of the university, of the medical department. The initial steps in this venture were taken by Governor A. C. Gibbs and others in 1864. They sent a communication to the Board of Trustees of Willamette University asking that body to organize a medical department. They further asked that the department be located in Portland, and that certain gentlemen be elected officers and professors of the same. On February 15, 1865, the Board voted to establish such a department in Portland, to be called the "Oregon Medical College", . . . The faculty elected consisted of Judge M. P. Deady, emeritus professor of medical jurisprudence. R. Glisan, M. D., professor of theory and practice of medicine; J. A . Chapman, M. D., professor of civil and military surgery; A. M. Loryea, M. D., professor and demonstrator of anatomy; R. B. Wilson, M. D., professor of physiology and institutes of medicine; Hon. A. C. Gibbs, professor of medical jurisprudence. It is interesting to note that a professor emeritus was elected before the school had begun to function. A temporary office was established at Number 5 Washington Street, which by the present system of numbering is 205 Washington Street. Difficulties arose . . . and for a time the project was abandoned. The faculty named above never gave instruction.
25
STEWART H. HOLBROOK
"Oregon's low-brow historian", Stewart H. Holbrook calls him self. If it is any seal to his classification, he has written about Harry Tracy, Calamity Jane, Butch Cassidy, Lola Montez, "Shanghai Days in Portland","The Last of Bunco Kelly", "Gay Dogs of Portland's Old Saloon Days"; and so much about loggers that the mere titles of his articles are full of connotation of life in the big woods—"Hercules in the Timber"; "Paul Bunyans, Then and Now", "Bullcooks", "Gastronomy in the Woods", "History of Port Ludlow", "The Largest Log Drive", "The Logging Camp Loses Its Soul", "Golf Reaches the Big Sticks", "Holiday on the Skidroad", "Logging Camp Humor", "Queer Working Stiffs", "A Note on Galluses", "The Whistle Punk", "Fire in the Bush", and many others. Low-brow? Does it depend upon the subject or the reader—pulp-paper dukes and duchesses or loggers in the Century?
Mr. Holbrook was born in 1893 at Newport, Vermont. For two years he attended Colebrook Academy, working in logging camps between terms. He served in the American Expeditionary Forces as a top sergeant, and returned to work in the woods in Northern New England. In 1920 he went to British Columbia, where he was employed in logging camps until 1923, when he came to Portland to be associate editor of the Four L Lumber News. He was editor from 1926 to 1934, resigning to do freelance writing. He was married in 1926 to Katherine Stanton Gill. Their home is in Portland. He belongs very definitely among the historians — he has their love of truth and their spirit of investigation. He is the historian of the folk life of an earlier day and of a great industry. What he says is accurate and vivid enough to stand the test of logger reading throughout the Northwest and has a literary quality genuine enough to meet the requirements of the discriminating magazine editors of America.
Fire in the Bush
From the Century Magazine, 1926
Night came and found an almost silent forest. The bushes around camp sounded that uneven and ominous rustle that bushes give out before a thunder-storm. Now and again an unseen, unfelt wind gave our stovepipes an eery rattle as it sighed northward. ... It was fire-time in the . . . timber. Loggers and wild animals sniffed the air. But supper passed and nothing had happened.
The camp itself was strangely quiet. Talk in the bunkhouses was hushed, as if by some sort of unspoken but mutual agreement. Even the poker game was mechanical. Puppet players saw and raised in low tones. The beloved accordions of the Finns were silent. Two hundred raw loggers huddled together in twenty little shacks, and hardly a sound! When one of the younger boys let a calked boot drop from an upper bunk and strike the floor, he was softly yet fervently cursed.
So subdued was everything that I recall how strident seemed the chatter of the foreman's wife that came to us in a torturing staccato from the fancy two-room shack in which they lived, somewhat apart from the rest of us. We could hear her sharp voice laughing at something her husband had said or done. She was always that way, talking and laughing. Just now she was telling her man what a fool he was for staying in the bush. Other men could make a living in town; why couldn't he? I heard her ask him that. We moved restlessly in our bunks and on the deacon-seats. All of us felt sorry for the foreman.
The wind rose and fell in short gusts. Not a crow could be heard from their favorite place near the pigpen. No fox barked in the timber. The half-blind old camp dog, usually sleeping his feeble days away on the steps of the filer's shack, was uneasy. Tonight he limped up and down ... up and down . . . and sniffing.
About half-past seven it happened. A short wail from the woods, turning in a flash from a wail to a long piercing scream that chilled the spine and made the hair stand. It was the yarder's whistle, held down by the watchman. Never was fire-siren like the uncanny shriek of a donkey-engine breaking through a silent forest night. . . . And it shook us to life.
A rush for the flat-cars lined up on the side-track in camp — everyone is ready—the locomotive sounds a warning blast — the donkey's screech is still cutting through our heads — hearts and ear-drums are pounding —the foreman gives the "highball"; we're off to the bush.
- ↑ The Oregonian editors briefly responded to Victor the following day. (Wikisource contributor note)