Early Western Travels
1748-1846

————

Volume XXI

Early Western Travels
1748-1846
A Series of Annotated Reprints of some of the best
and rarest contemporary volumes of travel, descriptive
of the Aborigines and Social and
Economic Conditions in the Middle
and Far West, during the Period
of Early American Settlement

Edited with Notes, Introductions, Index, etc., by

Reuben Gold Thwaites, LL.D.

Editor of "The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents," "Original
Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition," "Hennepin's
New Discovery," etc.

Volume XXI

Wyeth's Oregon, or a Short History of a Long Journey, 1832;
and Townsend's Narrative of a Journey across
the Rocky Mountains, 1834

Cleveland, Ohio
The Arthur H. Clark Company
1905

Copyright 1905, by
THE ARTHUR H. CLARK COMPANY
————
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Lakeside Press
R. R. DONNELLEY & SONS COMPANY
CHICAGO

CONTENTS OF VOLUME XXI

ILLUSTRATIONS TO VOLUME XXI

PREFACE TO VOLUME XXI

With the present volume our series reverts to the far Northwest, and takes up the story of the Oregon country during the fourth decade of the nineteenth century.

After the failure of the Astorian enterprise (1811-13), recounted with so much detail in the narratives of Franchère and Ross (reprinted in our volumes vi and vii), the Northwest Coast fell into the hands of the British fur-trade companies, who ruled the forest regions with a sway as absolute as that of a czar. The "Nor'westers" first occupied the field, sent out their daring "bourgeois" in all directions, and reaped a rich harvest of pelts. But upon the consolidation of the rival corporations (1821), the Hudson's Bay Company's men succeeded them, and for the first time law and order were enforced by the chief factors, and the denizens of the Northwest, white and red, soon learned to obey and revere their new masters. Prominent among the factors was Dr. John McLoughlin, the benevolent despot of Fort Vancouver, whose will was law not only for savages and fur-trade employés, but for all overland emigrants, British and American, who now began swarming to the banks of the Columbia. For twenty years he governed a province larger than France, and friend and foe alike testify to his probity and kindness, from which Americans profited quite as fully as those from his own land.

To the world at large, during this long period, the land beyond the mountains remained unknown and almost unknowable. Occasionally a New England skipper ventured to the mouth of the Columbia, exchanging goods from Hawaii and the South Seas for the salmon and furs of the Northwest Coast; but the inhabitants of the interior of our country long found the Rockies and their outlying deserts insurmountable barriers to Western passage.

Fur-traders finally led the way into the heart of the mountains. The Rocky Mountain Fur Company, under General William Ashley, began in 1822 that series of explorations and excursions that opened the highland fastnesses to the men of the West, and paved the way for the tracing of the Oregon Trail.

But it was bona-fide settlers, not fur-traders or trappers, that captured Oregon for the United States. Among the earliest of these were members of the company escorted by Captain Nathaniel Jarvis Wyeth, whose home was in the shades of academic learning at Cambridge, Massachusetts. Wyeth, however, owed the inception of the enterprise to another New Englander, his quondam fellow-townsman, Hall J. Kelley. An enterprising schoolmaster, the narratives of Lewis and Clark and of the Astorian participants fired his imagination with a desire to behold the Far West, while the joint-occupancy treaty with Great Britain (1818) aroused in him a patriotic desire that the region watered by the Columbia might be possessed by his native land. Throughout more than a decade he published pamphlets and articles for the local press, glowing with praise of Oregon, and succeeded in organizing the Oregon Colonization Society, from among whose members he hoped to lead an expedition to the far-away land of promise.

Among those who hearkened to him was the young Cambridgian, Wyeth, whose mind, more practical than Kelley's, but as yet uninformed as to the real difficulties of the enterprise, conceived the project of a great commercial enterprise to the Northwest. In the winter of 1831-32, Wyeth formed his party of pioneers and formulated his plans. With the opening of the spring a vessel laden with supplies was to start around Cape Horn, to meet the overland adventurers at the mouth of the Columbia. Wyeth, meanwhile, was to lead a company of hale young men across the continent, who should hunt and trap on the way, and be ready on arrival to provide a cargo of furs for the vessel, and later to develop the products of the Oregon country.

Wyeth's original plan for the land party included forty companions, but he finally set forth from Baltimore with an enrollment of but twenty-four. Arrived in St. Louis, he learned for the first time of the vast operations that Western fur-traders were already carrying on among the mountains—men to whom the experience of a life-time had taught the conditions and the methods of trade beyond the frontier. Nothing daunted, however, young Wyeth joined the yearly caravan of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, and under its protection proceeded to that company's rendezvous at Pierre's Hole. There the majority of his men, finding the hazard greater than they had anticipated, turned back; but the leader, with a handful of followers, pressed on, only to learn in the Oregon country that his vessel had been wrecked on a Pacific reef, and his cargo of supplies lost.

Received at Fort Vancouver with hospitable courtesy on the part of the Hudson's Bay people, Wyeth passed the winter in exploring the region and learning its resources. He became more than ever eager to exploit the great possibilities lying before him, and returned across the continent to Boston, making en route the famous journey—commemorated by Washington Irving in his Scenes in the Rocky Mountains—down the Bighorn and Yellowstone in a bull-boat. While still among the mountain men, Wyeth confidently entered into a contract with Milton Sublette and the latter's partner, Thomas Fitzpatrick, to carry out to them their yearly supplies the following season.

Intent on this and other projects, our adventurer hastened on to Boston, organized the Columbia River Fishing and Trading Company, and secured another vessel to proceed to Oregon by sea. This time Wyeth's party was trebled, and with a following of over seventy he started from St. Louis on March 7, 1834. Among his companions were the naturalists Nuttall and Townsend, and the missionaries Jason and Daniel Lee, all of whom were seeking the Oregon country on errands of their own. The fate of Wyeth's second expedition need not here be recounted, further than to state that the contract being repudiated by the Rocky Mountain men, Wyeth established a trading post in eastern Idaho, which he later (1837) sold to the Hudson's Bay Company and proceeded on to Oregon. After indefatigable efforts, and fatigues seldom paralleled, Wyeth finally (1836) abandoned the country and his ambitious project, and settled down to the humdrum role of ice-merchant in Cambridge, amassing a moderate fortune in shipping that useful commodity to the West Indies.

In recent years the journals and correspondence of Nathaniel J. Wyeth, recounting the experience of his two expeditions, have come to light and been published by the Oregon Historical Society. These documents, however, furnish but terse and bald statements of events, whereas detailed narratives appeared in works published many years before. The historian of the first expedition was a kinsman of its leader—John B. Wyeth, a young man of eighteen summers, who had previously been to sea and acquired a taste for adventure. After the long journey into the mountains, young Wyeth became dissatisfied with the hardships and ill prospects of the venture, and joined those malcontents at Pierre's Hole who voted for return, thus abandoning his leader before the journey was more than two-thirds completed. Upon arrival at Cambridge, the narrative of the younger Wyeth's adventures sped around the circle of his acquaintances, and reached the ear of Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse, a well-known local physician and scientist.

Waterhouse desired to discourage the prevalent wild schemes of Western emigration, and published Wyeth's experiences as a useful warning against such projects. The little book as issued from the press bore the title: Oregon; or a Short History of a Long Journey from the Atlantic Ocean to the Region of the Pacific by Land, drawn up from the notes and oral information of John B. Wyeth (Cambridge, 1833). It is not difficult for the reader to distinguish the work of the young traveller from that of the older scientist—the literary finish, the allusions, the moralizing and animadversions, of this composite book, are certainly the elder's; the racy adventures, the off-hand descriptions, surely those of the younger collaborator.[1]

John B. Wyeth's publication was distinctly annoying and hurtful to the plans of his cousin, and caused the latter to characterize it as "full of white lies." It is in the animus rather than the words themselves that the deceit is to be found; but disregarding its injudicious criticisms and comments, Wyeth's book is a readable work of travel, written in the full flush of health and spirits experienced by a vigorous youngster on a journey taken more as an escapade than with serious purpose. How far this motive carried him, is witnessed by the recitation of practical jokes in Cincinnati, and by the disasters of the home journey, when, abandoned by his companions, he was turned adrift in plague-stricken New Orleans to shift for himself. As a picture of early life on the plains and in the mountains, the account is graphic and attractive, as exampled by the descriptions of the scene at the rendezvous—also that at the conference between the Blackfoot chiefs and the envoys of the whites, previous to the battle of Pierre's Hole. Vivid pictures of the fur-trade leaders, and swift glimpses of friendly and hostile tribesmen, jostle the description of what was in effect a New England town-meeting in Pierre's Hole, and the report of an Indian battle famous in the annals of the West. The Wyeth narrative was printed privately, for circulation among friends, and therefore in a small edition. Examples are consequently now extremely rare, and it is believed that its reprint in the present series will be welcomed by students of early Western exploration.

Nathaniel J. Wyeth's second expedition was even more fortunate in its historian. John K. Townsend, a well-known Philadelphia physician and naturalist, had long been desirous of exploring the far western country in the interests of science. Hearing from his friend, Thomas Nuttall, then botanist at Harvard College, that he was preparing to join an expedition across the continent, Townsend made arrangements to accompany him, and obtained from the American Philosophical Society and the Academy of Natural Sciences at Philadelphia a commission to search for birds on their behalf.

The two scientists joined Wyeth at Boonville, Missouri, after a pedestrian journey from St. Louis to that point. The adventurers left Independence on April 28, 1834, in company with the annual fur-trading caravan for the Far West, and late in June arrived at the famous Green River rendezvous. Thence the Wyeth party proceeded to the Columbia, where a hearty welcome from Hudson's Bay officials awaited them both at Walla Walla and Vancouver.

Townsend remained in the Oregon district for nearly two years. In the winter of 1834-35 he spent several months in the Sandwich Islands, returning in Wyeth's vessel, the "May Dacre," in March, 1835. The next year he was employed by the Hudson's Bay Company as physician at Fort Vancouver, of which duties he was relieved by the coming of one of their own surgeons from the North (March, 1836). Still the ornithologist lingered in the country, anxious to complete his collection of native birds. He journeyed up the Columbia to Walla Walla, made a short excursion into the Blue Mountains, explored the river's mouth, visited the ruins of Lewis and Clark's Fort Clatsop, and finally embarked for home, by way of Cape Horn, on November 30, 1836. Three months were passed in Hawaii, en route; his stay in Chili was prolonged by illness; but at last, after a tedious voyage, he arrived off Cape Henlopen November 13, 1837, having been absent three years and eight months.

Townsend's account of his travels appeared at Philadelphia in 1839, entitled: Narrative of a Journey across the Rocky Mountains to the Columbia River, and a Visit to the Sandwich Islands, Chili, &c., with a Scientific Appendix. A London edition followed in 1840, bearing the title, Sporting Excursions to the Rocky Mountains including a Journey to the Columbia River and a Visit to the Sandwich Islands, Chili, etc. This contains a few insignificant changes. Our reprint is from the original Philadelphia version, omitting both the now unessential appendix, and that portion of the narrative which deals with Hawaii and South America, these being outside the field of our present interest.

Townsend wrote in an easy, flowing style, and a large share of his pages bear evidence of closely following his daily journals. Unlike Wyeth's kinsman, Townsend had much admiration for the ability and resource of his leader—for his "most indefatigable perseverance and industry"—and could only attribute his failure to the mysterious dealings of Providence. From the commercial and economic standpoint, Wyeth's enterprise was a failure; from the historian's point of view, it was eminently successful. Not only did he conduct considerable parties of Americans across the continent, but some of these became permanent settlers in the Oregon country; and his enterprise awakened the country to the dangers of joint political occupancy.

Lewis and Clark's journals, as paraphrased by Nicholas Biddle in 1814, had first called popular attention to the region. John B. Wyeth's book, in 1833, was the first American publication on the subject, after the records of the initial exploration, and aroused a fresh interest in at least a limited group of influential readers; the spark was further kindled by the appearance, in 1836, of Washington Irving's classic Astoria; and then appeared, three years later, Townsend's admirable narrative, giving to the world some detailed knowledge of the resources of the Far Northwest. In the same year with Townsend's publication, Wyeth himself presented to Congress his "Memoir on Oregon,"[2] which was freighted with information concerning the worth of the new region. These several works were important influences in forcing the Oregon question upon the attention of Congress, and thus paving the way for the final acquisition of that country by the United States under the Oregon Treaty of 1846.[3]

In the preparation of the present volume for the press, the Editor has had, throughout, the active assistance of Louise Phelps Kellogg, Ph.D.

R. G. T.

Madison, Wis., October, 1905.

Wyeth's Oregon, or a Short History of a
Long Journey
————
Reprint of original edition: Cambridge, 1833

OREGON;

OR

A SHORT HISTORY OF A LONG JOURNEY

FROM THE

ATLANTIC OCEAN TO THE REGION OF THE PACIFIC.

BY LAND.

DRAWN UP FROM THE NOTES AND ORAL INFORMATION

OF

JOHN B WYETH

ONE OF THE PARTY WHO LEFT MR NATHANIEL J WYETH,

JULY 28TH, 1832, FOUR DAYS MARCH BEYOND THE RIDGE OF THE

ROCKY MOUNTAINS,

AND THE ONLY ONE WHO HAS RETURNED TO NEW ENGLAND.

CAMBRIDGE
PRINTED FOR JOHN B. WYETH.
1833.

A contented mind is a continual feast; but entire satisfaction has never been procured by wealth however enormous, or ambition however successful.

OREGON EXPEDITION

In order to understand this Oregon Expedition, it is necessary to say, that thirty years ago (1803), PRESIDENT JEFFERSON recommended to Congress to authorize competent officers to explore the river Missouri from its mouth to its source, and by crossing the mountains to seek the best water communication thence to the Pacific Ocean. This arduous task was undertaken by Captain M. Lewis and Lieutenant W. Clarke of the first regiment of infantry. They were accompanied by a select party of soldiers, and arrived at the Missouri in May, 1804, and persisted in their novel and difficult task into the year 1806, and with such success as to draw from President Jefferson the following testimonial of their heroic services, viz. "The expedition of Messrs. LEWIS & CLARKE, for exploring the river Missouri, and the best communication from that to the Pacific Ocean, has had all the success which could be expected; and for which arduous service they deserve well of their country."[4]

The object of this enterprise was to confer in a friendly manner with the Indian Nations throughout their whole journey, with a view to establish a friendly and equitable commerce with them, on {2} principles emulating those that marked and dignified the settlement of Pennsylvania by William Penn. It was beyond doubt that the President and Congress sincerely desired to treat the Indians with kindness and justice, and to establish peace, order, and good neighbourhood with all the savage tribes with whom they came in contact, and not to carry war or violence among any of them who appeared peaceably disposed.

A few years before the period of which we have spoken, our government had acquired by purchase the vast and valuable Territory of Louisiana from the renowned NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, at that time the Chief of the French Nation. Considering his previous intentions, and actual preparations under his famous General Bernadotte,[5] nothing could be more fortunate for these United States than this purchase. Our possession of Louisiana was so grievous a sore to the very jealous Spaniards, that they have, till lately, done all in their power to debar and mislead us from pursuing discoveries in that quarter, or in the Arkansas, Missouri, or Oregon. Yet few or none of them probably believed that we should, during the present generation, or the next, attempt the exploration of the distant Oregon Territory, which extends from the Rocky Mountains to the shores of the Pacific Ocean, or in other words, from the Missouri and Yellow Stone rivers to that of the river Columbia or Oregon which pours into the Ocean by a wide mouth at the immense distance from us of about four thousand miles; yet one and twenty men, chiefly farmers and a few mechanics, had the hardihood to undertake it, and that too with deliberation and sober calculation. But what will not a New-England {3} man undertake when honor and interest are the objects before him? Have not the people of that sand-bank, Nantucket, redeemed it from the ocean, and sailed round Cape Horn in pursuit of whales for their oil, and seals for their skins? A score of our farmers seeing that Nantucket and New Bedford had acquired riches and independence by traversing the sea to the distant shores of the Pacific, determined to do something like it by land. Their ardor seemed to have hidden from their eyes the mighty difference between the facility of passing in a ship with the aid of sails, progressing day and night, by skilfully managing the winds and the helm, and that of a complicated wagon upon wheels, their journey to be over mountains and rivers, and through hostile tribes of savages who dreaded and hated the sight of a white man.

This novel expedition was not however the original or spontaneous notion of Mr. Nathaniel J. Wyeth,[6] nor was it entirely owing to the publications of Lewis & Clarke or Mackenzie.[7] Nor was it entirely owing to the enterprise of Messrs. Barrell, Hatch, and Bulfinch, who fitted out two vessels that sailed from Boston in 1787, commanded by Captains Kendrick and Gray, which vessels arrived at Nootka in September, 1788.[8] They were roused to it by the writings of Mr. Hall J. Kelly, who had read all the books he could get on the voyages and travels in Asia, Africa, Europe, and America, until he had heated his mind to a degree little short of the valorous Knight of La Mancha, that is to say, he believed all he read, and was firm in the opinion that an Englishman and an American, or either, by himself, could endure and achieve any thing {4} that any man could do with the same help, and farther, that a New-England man or "Yankee," could with less.[9] That vast region, which stretches from between the east of the Mississippi, and south of the Lakes Superior, Huron, Michigan, Erie, and Ontario, was too narrow a space for the enterprise of men born and bred within a mile or two of the oldest University in the United States.[10] Whatever be the true character of the natives of New England, one thing must be allowed them, that of great and expansive ideas,—beyond, far beyond the generality of the inhabitants of the small Island of Britain. I say small, for if that Island should be placed in the midst of these United States, it would hardly form more than a single member of our extended republic. That vast rivers, enormous mountains, tremendous cataracts, with an extent corresponding to the hugeness of the features of America, naturally inspire men with boundless ideas, few will doubt. This adventurous disposition, at the same time, will as naturally banish from the mind what the new-light doctrine of Phrenology calls the disposition bump of Inhabitiveness, or an inclination to stay at home, and in its place give rise to a roaming, wandering inclination, which, some how or other, may so affect the organs of vision, and of hearing, as to debar a person from perceiving what others may see, the innumerable difficulties in the way. Mr. Hall J. Kelly's writings operated like a match applied to the combustible matter accumulated in the mind of the energetic Nathaniel J. Wyeth, which reflected and multiplied the flattering glass held up to view by the ingenious and well-disposed schoolmaster.

Mr. Nathaniel J. Wyeth had listened with peculiar {5} delight to all the flattering accounts from the Western regions, and that at a time when he was surrounded with apparent advantages, and even enviable circumstances. He was born and bred near the borders of a beautiful small Lake, as it would be called in Great Britain; but what we in this country call a large Pond; because we generally give the name of Lakes only to our vast inland seas, some of which almost rival in size the Caspian and Euxine in the old world. It seems that he gave entire credit to the stories of the wonderful fertility of the soil on the borders of the Ohio, Missouri, the river Platte, and the Oregon, with the equally wonderful healthfulness of the climate. We need not wonder that a mind naturally ardent and enterprising should become too enthusiastic to pursue the laborious routine of breaking up and harrowing the hard and stubborn soil of Massachusetts within four miles of the sea, where the shores are bounded and fortified by stones and rocks, which extend inland, lying just below the surface of the ground, while the regions of the West were represented as standing in need of very little laborious culture, such was the native vigor of its black soil. The spot where our adventurer was born and grew up, had many peculiar and desirable advantages over most others in the county of Middlesex. Besides rich pasturage, numerous dairies, and profitable orchards, and other fruit trees, it possessed the luxuries of well cultivated gardens of all sorts of culinary vegetables, and all within three miles of the Boston Market-House, and two miles of the largest live-cattle market in New England. All this, and more too, had not sufficient attractions to retain Mr. Wyeth in his native town and county.

{6} Besides these blessings, I shall add another. The Lake I spoke of, commonly called Fresh Pond, is a body of delightful water, which seems to be the natural head or source of all the numerous underground rivers running between it and the National Navy Yard at Charlestown, which is so near to the city of Boston as to be connected to it by a bridge; for wherever you sink a well, between the body of water just mentioned, you strike a pelucid vein of it at from nineteen to twenty-two feet depth from the surface. With the aforesaid Lake or Pond is connected another not quite so large, but equally beautiful. Around these bodies of inosculating waters, are well cultivated farms and a number of gentlemen's country-seats, forming a picture of rural beauty and plenty not easily surpassed in Spring, Summer, and Autumn; and when winter has frozen the lakes and all the rivers, this spot has another and singular advantage; for our adventurer sold the water of this pond; which was sent to the West-Indian Islands, Philadelphia, New Orleans, and other places south of this; which is so much of a singularity as to require explanation.

In our very coldest weather, January and February, the body of water we spoke of is almost every year frozen to the thickness of from eighteen inches to two feet,—sometimes less, and very rarely more. It is then sawed into cubes of the size just mentioned, and deposited in large store-houses, and carted thence every month in the year, even through the dog-days, in heavy teams drawn by oxen and horses to the wharves in Boston, and put on board large and properly constructed vessels, and carried into the hot climates already {7} mentioned. The heavy teams five, or six, or more, close following each other, day and night, and even through the hottest months, would appear incredible to a stranger. Here was a traffic without any drawback, attended with no other charge than the labor of cutting and transporting the article; for the pond belonged to no man, any more than the air which hung above it. Both belonged to mankind. No one claimed any personal property in it, or control over it from border to border. A clearer profit can hardly be imagined. While the farmer was ploughing his ground, manuring and planting it, securing his well-tended crop by fencing, and yet after all his labor, the Hessian-fly, the canker or slug worm, or some other destructive insect, or some untimely frost, as was the case last winter, might lay waste all his pains and cut off all his expectations. The only risk to which the Ice-merchant was liable was a blessing to most of the community; I mean the mildness of a winter that should prevent his native lake from freezing a foot or two thick. Our fishermen have a great advantage over the farmer in being exempt from fencing, walling, manuring, taxation, and dry seasons; and only need the expence of a boat, line, and hook, and the risk of life and health; but from all these the Ice-man is in a manner entirely exempted; and yet the Captain of this Oregon Expedition seemed to say, All this availeth me nothing, so long as I read books in which I find, that by only going about four thousand miles, over land, from the shore of our Atlantic to the shore of the Pacific, after we have there entrapped and killed the beavers and otters, we shall be able, after building vessels for {8} the purpose, to carry our most valuable peltry to China and Cochin China, our seal-skins to Japan, and our superfluous grain to various Asiatic ports, and lumber to the Spanish settlements on the Pacific; and to become rich by underworking and underselling the people of Hindostan; and, to crown all, to extend far and wide the traffic in oil by killing tame whales on the spot, instead of sailing round the stormy region of Cape Horn.

All these advantages and more too were suggested to divers discontented and impatient young men. Talk to them of the great labor, toil, and risk, and they would turn a deaf ear to you: argue with them, and you might as well reason with a snow-storm. Enterprising young men run away with the idea that the farther they go from home, the surer they will be of making a fortune. The original projector of this golden vision first talked himself into the visionary scheme, and then talked twenty others into the same notion.[11] Some of their neighbours and well-wishers thought differently from them; and some of the oldest, and most thoughtful, and prudent endeavoured to dissuade them from so very ardous and hazardous an expedition. But young and single men are for tempting the untried scene; and when either sex has got a notion of that sort, the more you try to dissuade them, the more intent they are on their object. Nor is this bent of mind always to be censured, or wondered at. Were every man to be contented to remain in the town in which he was born, and to follow the trade of his father, there would be an end to improvement, and a serious impediment to spreading population. It is difficult to draw the exact line between contentment, and that inactivity {9} which approaches laziness. The disposition either way seems stamped upon us by nature, and therefore innate. This is certainly the case with birds and beasts;—the wild geese emigrate late in the Autumn to a southern climate, and return again in the Spring to a northern one, while the owl and several other birds remain all their lives near where they were hatched; whereas man is not so much confined by a natural bias to his native home. He can live in all climates from the equator to very near the dreary poles, which is not the case with other animals; and it would seem that nature intended he should live anywhere;—for whereas other animals are restricted in their articles of food, some living wholly on flesh, and others wholly on vegetables, man is capable of feeding upon every thing that is eatable by any creature, and of mixing every article together, and varying them by his knowledge and art of cookery,—a knowledge and skill belonging to man alone. Hence it appears that Providence, who directs everything for the best, intended that man should wander over the globe, inhabit every region, and dwell wherever the sun could shine upon him, and where water could be obtained for his use.

So far from deriding the disposition to explore unknown regions, we should consider judicious travellers as so many benefactors of mankind. It is most commonly a propensity that marks a vigorous intellect, and a benevolent heart. The conduct of the Spaniards, when they conquered Mexico and Peru with the sole view of robbing them of their gold and silver, and of forcing them to abandon their native religion, has cast an odium on those first adventurers upon this continent and their first {10} enterprises in India have stigmatized the Dutch and the English; nor were our own forefathers, who left England to enjoy religious freedom, entirely free from the stain of injustice and cruelty towards the native Indians.—Let us therefore in charity, nay, in justice, speak cautiously of what may seem to us censurable in the first explorers of uncivilized countries; and if we should err in judgment, let it be on the side of commendation.

Mr. Wyeth, or as we shall hereafter call him, Captain Wyeth, as being leader of the Band of the Oregon adventurers, after having inspired twenty-one persons with his own high hopes and expectations (among whom was his own brother, Dr. Jacob Wyeth,[12] and a gun-smith, a blacksmith, two carpenters, and two fishermen, the rest being farmers and laborers, brought up to no particular trade) was ready, with his companions, to start off to the Pacific Ocean, the first of March, 1832, to go from Boston to the mouth of Columbia river by land.

I was the youngest of the company, not having attained my twentieth year; but, in the plentitude of health and spirits, I hoped every thing, believed every thing my kinsman, the Captain, believed and said, and all doubts and fears were banished. The Captain used to convene us every Saturday night at his house for many months previous to our departure, to arrange and settle the plan of our future movements, and to make every needful preparation; and such were his thoughtfulness and vigilance, that it seemed to us nothing was forgotten and every thing necessary provided. Our three vehicles, or wagons, if we may call by that name a unique contrivance, half boat, and half carriage, may be mentioned as an instance of our Captain's {11} talents for snug contrivance. It was a boat of about thirteen feet long, and four feet wide, of a shape partly of a canoe, and partly of a gondola. It was not calked with tarred oakum, and payed with pitch, lest the rays of the sun should injure it while upon wheels; but it was nicely jointed, and dovetailed. The boat part was firmly connected with the lower, or axletree, or wheel part;—the whole was so constructed that the four wheels of it were to be taken off when we came to a river, and placed in the wagon, while the tongue or shaft was to be towed across by a rope. Every thing was as light as could be consistent with safety. Some of the Cambridge wags said it was a boat begot upon a wagon,—a sort of mule, neither horse nor ass,—a mongrel, or as one of the collegians said it was a thing amphibious, anatomically constructed like some equivocal animals, allowing it to crawl upon the land, or to swim on the water; and he therefore thought it ought to be denominated an amphibium. This would have gone off very well, and to the credit of the learned collegian, had not one of the gang, who could hardly write his own name, demurred at it; because he said that it reflected not back the honor due to the ingenious contriver of the commodious and truly original vehicle; and for his part, he thought that if they meant to give it a particular name, that should redound to the glory of the inventor, it ought to be called a Nat-wye-thium; and this was instantaneously agreed to by acclamation! Be that as it may, the vehicle did not disgrace the inventive genius of New England. This good-humored raillery, shows the opinion of indifferent people, merely lookers-on. The fact was, the generality {12} of the people in Cambridge considered it a hazardous enterprise, and considerably notional. About this time there appeared some well written essays in the Boston newspapers, to show the difficulty and impracticability of the scheme, purporting to doubt the assertions of Mr. Hall J. Kelly respecting the value and pleasantness of the Oregon territory. The three vehicles contained a gross of axes, a variety of articles, or "goods" so called, calculated for the Indian market, among which vermilion and other paints were not forgotten, glass beads, small looking-glasses, and a number of tawdry trinkets, cheap knives, buttons, nails, hammers, and a deal of those articles, on which young Indians of both sexes set a high value, and white men little or none. Such is the spirit of trade and traffic, from the London and Amsterdam merchant, down to an Indian trader and a yankee tin-ware man in his jingling go-cart; in which he travels through Virginia and the Carolinas to vend his wares, and cheat the Southerners, and bring home laughable anecdotes of their simplicity and ignorance, to the temporary disgrace of the common people of the Northern and Eastern part of the Union, where a travelling tin-man dare hardly show himself,—and yet is held up in the South as the real New-England character, and this by certain white people who know the use of letters!

The company were uniform in their dress. Each one wore a coarse woollen jacket and pantaloons, a striped cotton shirt, and cowhide boots: every man had a musket, most of them rifles, all of them bayonets in a broad belt, together with a large clasped knife for eating and common purposes. The Captain and one or two more added pistols; but {13} every one had in his belt a small axe. This uniformity had a pleasing effect, which, together with their curious wagons, was noticed with commendation in the Baltimore newspapers, as a striking contrast with the family emigrants of husband, wife, and children, who have for thirty years and more passed on to the Ohio, Kentucky, and other territories. The whole bore an aspect of energy, good contrivance, and competent means. I forgot to mention that we carried tents, camp-kettles, and the common utensils for cooking victuals, as our plan was to live like soldiers, and to avoid, as much as possible, inns and taverns.

The real and avowed object of this hardy-looking enterprise was to go to the river Columbia, otherwise called the river Oregon, or river of the West,[13] which empties by a very wide mouth into the Pacific Ocean, and there and thereabouts commence a fur trade by trafficking with the Indians, as well as beaver and other hunting by ourselves. We went upon shares, and each one paid down so much; and our association was to last during five years. Each man paid our Leader forty dollars. Captain Wyeth was our Treasurer, as well as Commander; and all the expenses of our travelling on wheels, and by water in steam-boats, were defrayed by our Leader, to whom we all promised fidelity and obedience. For twenty free-born New-England men, brought up in a sort of Indian freedom, to be bound together to obey a leader in all things reasonable, without something like articles of war, was, to say the least of it, a hazardous experiment. The Captain and crew of a Nantucket whaling ship came nearest to such an association; for in this case each man runs that great risk of his life, {14} in voluntarily attacking and killing a whale, which could not be expected from men hired by the day, like soldiers; so much stronger does association for gain operate, than ordinary wages. As fighting Indians from behind trees and rocks is next, in point of courage, to attacking a whale, the monarch of the main, in his own element, a common partnership is the only scheme for achieving and securing such dangerous purposes.

We left the city of Boston, 1st of March, 1832, and encamped on one of the numerous islands in its picturesque harbour, where we remained ten days, by way of inuring ourselves to the tented field; and on the 11th of the same month we hoisted sail for Baltimore, where we arrived after a passage of fifteen days,[14] not without experiencing a snow-storm, severe cold, and what the landsmen considered a hard gale, at which I, who had been one voyage to sea, did not wonder. It made every man on board look serious; and glad were we to be set on shore at the fair city of Baltimore, in which are to be found a great number of merchants, traders, and mechanics from different parts of New England, and where of course there are none, or very few, of those ridiculous prejudices against what they call Yankees, that are observable in Virginia and the Carolinas.

At Baltimore our amphibious carriages excited great attention, and I may add, our whole company was an object of no small curiosity and respect. This, said they, is "Yankee all over!"—bold enterprise, neatness, and good contrivance. As we carefully avoided the expense of inns and taverns, we marched two miles out of Baltimore, and there encamped during four days; and then we put {15} our wagons into the cars on the rail-road; which extends from thence sixty miles, which brought us to the foot of the Alleghany mountains.[15] Quitting the rail-road at the foot of the Alleghany, we encountered that mountain. Here we experienced a degree of inhospitality not met with among the savages. The Innkeepers, when they found that we came from New England, betrayed an unwillingness to accommodate Yankees, from a ridiculous idea, that the common people, so nicknamed, were too shrewd at a bargain and trading, for a slow and straight-forward Dutchman; for the inhabitants of this mountainous region, were generally sons and grandsons of the Dutch and German first settlers; and it cannot be denied and concealed, that the New England land-jobbers were in their bargains too hard for the torpid Dutchman, who, it is true, loved money as much as any people, yet when they, or their fathers had been the sufferers from a set of roving sharpers, it is no wonder that an hereditary prejudice should descend with exaggeration and aggravation from father to son, and that their resentment should visit their innocent sons to the third and fourth generation. No one pretends to mention any fact or deed, in which those Dutch foreigners were defrauded of their rights and dues; and all that can be, with truth, said, was, that the land-speculators from Connecticut and Massachusetts were to New-England what Yorkshire men are thought to be to the rest of the people of England, a race more sharp and quick-sighted than their neighbours,—and with a sort of constitutional good humor, called fun, they could twist that uneducated progeny of a German stock around their fingers;—hence their reluctance {16} to have any thing to do with men, whose grand-fathers were too knowing for them. You never hear the French or the English complaining of the over-shrewdness of the New-England people. They accord very well together, and very frequently intermarry. No, it is the Dutch, and the descendants of transported convicts, who sneer at those they call Yankees, whom their fathers feared, and of course hated.

At one public house on the mountains near which we halted, the master of it, learning that we came from Boston, refused us any refreshment and lodging. He locked up his bar-room, put the key in his pocket, went out, and came back with four or five of his neighbours, when the disagreement ran so high, that the tavern-keeper and the Yankee Captain each seized his rifle. The latter pointing to the other's sign before his door, demanded both lodging and refreshment, as the legal condition of his tavern-license;[16] and the dispute ended in our Captain's sleeping in the house with three of his party, well armed, determined to defend their persons, and to insist on their rights as peaceable and unoffending travellers, while the rest of the company bivouacked near their wagons, and reposed themselves, like veteran soldiers, in their tents and wagons.

We gladly departed from the inhospitable Alleghany or Apalachian mountains, which extend from the river St. Lawrence to the confines of Georgia, {17} and which run nearly parallel to the sea-shore from sixty to one hundred and thirty miles from it, and dividing the rivers, which flow into the Atlantic on the east, from those that run into the lakes and into the Mississippi on the west. The part we passed was in the state of Pennsylvania. Our next stretch was for the river Monongahela, where we took the steamboat for Pittsburg.[17] This town has grown in size and wealth, in a few years, surprisingly. It is two hundred and thirty miles from Baltimore; three hundred from Philadelphia. It is built on a point of land jutting out towards the river Ohio, and washed on each side by the Alleghany and Monongahela, which rivers uniting are lost in the noble Ohio. It was originally a fortress built by the French, called Fort du Quesne being afterwards taken by the English in 1759, it was called fort Pitt, in honor of the famous William Pitt, afterwards Earl of Chatham, under whose administration it was taken from the French, together with all Canada.[18] On this spot a city has been reared by the Americans, bearing the name of Pittsburg which has thriven in a surprising manner by its numerous manufactories in glass, as well as in all the metals in common use. To call it the Birmingham of America is to underrate its various industry; and to call the English Birmingham Pittsburg, would be to confer upon that town additional honor; not but what the British Birmingham is by far the most pleasant place to live in. Pittsburg is the region of iron and fossil coal, of furnaces, glass-works, and a variety of such like manufactures. This town has somewhat the color of a coal-pit, or of a black-smith's shop. The wonder is, that any gentleman {18} of property should ever think of building a costly dwelling-house, with corresponding furniture, in the coal region of the western world; but there is no disputing de gustibus—Chacun á son gout. The rivers and the surrounding country are delightful, and the more so from the contrast between them and that hornet's nest of bustle and dirt, the rich capital. Thousands of miserable culprits are doomed to delve in deep mines of silver, gold, and quicksilver among the Spaniards for their crimes; but here they are all freemen, who choose to breathe smoke, and swallow dirt, for the sake of clean dollars and shining eagles. Hence it is that the Pittsburgh workmen appear, when their faces are washed, with the ruddiness of high health, the plenitude of good spirits, and the confidence of freemen.

From the busy city of thriving Pittsburg our next important movement was down the Ohio. We accordingly embarked in a very large steam-boat called The Freedom; and soon found ourselves, bag and baggage very much at our ease and satisfaction, on board a truly wonderful floating inn, hotel, or tavern, for such are our steam-boats. Nothing of the kind can surpass the beauty of this winding river, with its fine back-ground of hills of all shapes and colors, according to the advancement of vegetation from the shrubs to the tallest trees. But the romantic scenery on both sides of the Ohio is so various and so captivating to a stranger, that it requires the talents of a painter to give even a faint idea of the picture; and the effect on my mind was, not to estimate them as I ought, but to feed my deluded imagination with the belief that we should find on the {19} Missouri, and on the Rocky Mountains, and Columbia river, object as much finer than the Ohio afforded, as this matchless river exceeded our Merrimac or Kennebeck: and so it is with the youth of both sexes; not satisfied with the present gifts of nature, they pant after the untried scene, which imagination is continually bodying forth, and time as constantly dissipating.

The distance from Pittsburg to the Mississippi is about one thousand miles. Hutchins estimated it at one thousand one hundred and eighty-eight,—Dr. Drake at only nine hundred and forty-nine.[19] Wheeling is a town of some importance. Here the great national road into the interior from the city of Washington, meets that of Zanesville, Chillicothè, Columbus, and Cincinnati.[20] It is the best point to aim at in very low stages of the water, and from thence boats may go at all seasons of the year. We passed Marietta, distinguished for its remarkable remains of mounds, and works, resembling modern fortifications, but doubtless the labor of the ancient aboriginals, of whom there is now no existing account; but by these works, and articles found near them, they must have belonged to a race of men farther advanced in arts and civilization than the present Indian in that region,[21]—a people who, we may well suppose, were the ancestors of the Mexicans. Yet we see at this time little more than log-houses belonging to miserable tenants of white people. All the sugar used by the people here is obtained from the maple tree. Fossil coal is found along the banks. There is a creek pouring forth Petroleum, about one hundred miles from Pittsburg on the Alleghany, called Oil Creek, which will blaze on the application of a {20} match. This is not uncommon in countries abounding in bituminous coal. Nitre is found wherever there are suitable caves and caverns for its collection. The people here are rather boisterous in their manners, and intemperate in their habits, by what we saw and heard, more so than on the other side of the river where slavery is prohibited. Indeed slavery carries a black moral mark with it visible on those whose skins are naturally of a different color; and Mr. Jefferson's opinion of the influence of slavery on the whites, justifies our remark.[22]

We stopped one day and night at the flourishing town of Cincinnati, the largest city in the Western country, although laid out so recently as 1788.[23] It is twenty miles above the mouth of the Great Miami, and four hundred and sixty-five miles below Pittsburg. It appears to great advantage from the river, the ground inclining gradually to the water. Three of us had an evidence of that by a mischievous trick for which we deserved punishment. We were staring about the fine city that has risen up with a sort of rapid, mushroom growth, surprising to every one who sees it, and who considers that it is not more than forty years old. In the evening we went into a public house, where we treated ourselves with that sort of refreshment which inspires fun, frolic, and mischief. We remained on shore till so late an hour that every body appeared to have gone to bed, when we set out to return to our steam-boat. In our way to it we passed by a store, in the front of which stood three barrels of lamp-oil, at the head of a fine sloping street. The evil spirit of mischief put it into our heads to set them a rolling down the inclined plane to the river. No sooner hinted, than executed. {21} We set all three a running, and we ran after them; and what may have been lucky for us, they were recovered next day whole. Had there been legal inquisition made for them, we had determined to plead character, that we were from Boston, the land of steady habits and good principles, and that it must have been some gentlemen Southerners, with whose characters for nightly frolics, we, who lived within sound of the bell of the University of Cambridge were well acquainted. The owners of the oil came down to the steam-boat, and carried back their property without making a rigid examination for the offenders; without suspecting that prudent New-England young men would indulge in a wanton piece of fun, where so much was at stake. But John Bull and Jonathan are queer fellows.

From Cincinnati to St. Louis, we experienced some of those disagreeable occurrences, that usually happen to democratical adventurers. Our Captain, to lessen the expenses of the expedition, had bargained with the Captain of the steam-boat, that we of his band should assist in taking on board wood from the shore, to keep our boilers from cooling. Although every one saw the absolute necessity of the thing, for our common benefit and safety, yet some were for demurring at it, as not previously specified and agreed upon. Idleness engenders mutiny oftener than want. In scarcity and in danger men cling together like gregarious animals; but as soon as an enterprising gang can sit down, as in a steam-boat, with nothing to do but to find fault, they are sure to become discontented, and discontent indulged leads to mutiny. Whatever I thought then, I do not think now that Captain Wyeth was {22} to blame for directing his followers to aid in wooding; nor should the men have grumbled at it. I now am of opinion that our aiding in wooding the steam-boat was right, reasonable, and proper. Every man of us, except the surgeon of the company, Dr. Jacob Wyeth, ought, on every principle of justice and generosity, to have given that assistance.

Our navigation from Cincinnati to St. Louis was attended with circumstances new, interesting, and very often alarming. Passing the rapids of the Ohio, or falls as they are called, between the Indiana territory and Kentucky, was sufficiently appalling to silence all grumbling. These falls, or rapids are in the vicinity of Louisville, Jeffersonville, Clarksville, and Shipping-port, and are really terrific to an inexperienced farmer or mechanic.[24] Our Hell-gate in Long-Island Sound is a common brook compared with them; and when we had passed through them into the Mississippi, the assemblage of trees in the river, constituting snags and sawyers, offered themselves as a species of risk and danger, which none of us had ever calculated on or dreamt of. We knew that there was danger in great storms, of huge trees blowing down on one's head; and that those who took shelter under them in a thunder-storm, risked their lives from lightning; but to meet destruction from trees in an immense river, seemed to us a danger of life, which we had not bargained for, and entirely out of our agreement and calculation. We had braced ourselves up only against the danger of hostile Indians, and enraged beasts, which we meant to war against. Beyond that, all was smooth water to us. The truth of the matter is,—the {23} men whom Captain Wyeth had collected were not the sort of men for such an expedition. They were too much on an equality to be under strict orders like soldiers. Lewis & Clarke were very fortunate in the men they had under them. Major Long's company was, in a great degree, military, and yet three of his soldiers deserted him at one time, and a fourth soon after.[25]

On the 18th of April, 1832, we arrived at St. Louis. As we had looked forward to this town, as a temporary resting-place, we entered it in high spirits, and pleased ourselves with a notion that the rest of our way till we should come to the Rocky Mountains would be, if not down hill, at least on a level: but we counted without our host.

St. Louis was founded by a Frenchman named Peter la Clade in 1764, eighty-four years after the establishment of Fort Crève-cœur on the Illinois river; and inhabited entirely by Frenchmen and the descendants of Frenchmen, who had carried on for the most part a friendly and lucrative trade with the Indians.[26] But since the vast Western country has been transferred to the United States, its population has been rapidly increased by numerous individuals and families from different parts of the Union; and its business extended by enterprising mechanics and merchants from the New-England States; and its wealth greatly augmented. The old part of St. Louis has a very different aspect from that of Cincinnati, where every thing appears neat, and new, and tasteful; as their public buildings, their theatre, and spacious hotels, not forgetting Madam Trollope's bazar, or, as it is commonly called, "Trollope's Folly,"[27] as well as its spacious streets, numerous coaches, and other {24} marks of rapid wealth, and growing luxury. As St. Louis has advanced in wealth, magnitude, and importance, it has gradually changed the French language and manners, and assumed the American. It however contains, I am told, many of the old stock that are very respectable for their literary acquirements and polished manners.

We shall avoid, as we have avowed, any thing like censure of Captain Wyeth's scheme during his absence; but when we arrived at St. Louis, we could not but lament his want of information, respecting the best means of obtaining the great objects of our enterprise. Here we were constrained to sell our complicated wagons for less than half what they originally cost. We were convinced that they were not calculated for the rough roads, and rapid streams and eddies of some of the rivers we must necessarily pass. We here thought of the proverb, "that men never do a thing right the first time." Captain Wyeth might have learned at St. Louis, that there were two wealthy gentlemen who resided at or near that place, who had long since established a regular trade with the Indians, Mr. M——, and a young person, Mr. S——, and that a stranger could hardly compete with such established traders. The turbulent tribe, called the Black-foot tribe, had long been supplied with fire arms and ammunition, beads, vermilion and other paints, tobacco and scarlet cloth, from two or three capital traders at, or near, St. Louis, and every article most saleable with the Indians. Both parties knew each other, and had confidence in each other; and having this advantage over our band of adventurers, it does not appear that Mr. Mackenzie, and Mr. Sublet felt any apprehensions or jealousy {25} of the new comers from Boston; but treated them with friendship, and the latter with confidence and cordiality; the former gentleman being, in a manner, retired from business, except through numerous agents.[28] He owns a small steam-boat called the Yellow Stone, the name of one of the branches of the Missouri river.[29] Through such means the Indians are supplied with all they want; and they appeared not to wish to have any thing to do with any one else, especially the adventurous Yankees. These old established traders enjoy a friendly influence, or prudent command, over those savages, that seems to operate to the exclusion of every one else; and this appeared from the manner in which they treated us, which was void of every thing like jealousy, or fear of rivalship. Their policy was to incorporate us with their own troop.

We put our goods, and other baggage on board the steam-boat Otter, and proceeded two hundred and sixty miles up the Missouri river, which is as far as the white people have any settlements. We were obliged to proceed very slowly and carefully on account of the numerous snags and sawyers with which this river abounds. They are trees that have been loosened, and washed away from the soft banks of the river. They are detained by sandbanks, or by other trees, that have floated down some time before. Those of them whose sharp branches point opposite the stream are the snags, against which boats are often impelled, as they are not visible above water, and many are sunk by the wounds these make in their bows. The sawyers are also held fast by their roots, while the body of the tree whips up and down, alternately visible and concealed beneath the surface. These {26} are the chief terrors of the Missouri and the Mississippi rivers. As to crocodiles they are little regarded, being more afraid of man than he of them. On account of these snags and sawyers, boatmen avoid passing in the night, and are obliged to keep a sharp look out in the day-time. The sawyers when forced to the bottom or near it by a strong current, or by eddies, rise again with such force that few boats can withstand the shock. The course of the boat was so tediously slow, that many of us concluded to get out and walk on the banks of the river. This, while it gave us agreeable exercise, was of some service in lightening our boat, for with other passengers from St. Louis, we amounted to a considerable crew. The ground was level, and free from underwood. We passed plenty of deer, wild turkeys, and some other wild fowl unknown to us, and expected to find it so all the way.

We arrived at a town or settlement called Independence.[30] This is the last white settlement on our route to the Oregon, and this circumstance gave a different cast to our peregrination, and operated not a little on our hopes, and our fears, and our imaginations. Some of our company began to ask each other some serious questions; such as, Where are we going? and what are we going for? and sundry other questions, which would have been wiser had we asked them before we left Cambridge, and ruminated well on the answers. But Westward ho! was our watchword, and checked all doubts, and silenced all expressions of fear.

Just before we started from this place, a company of sixty-two in number arrived from St. Louis, under the command of William Sublet, Esq., an experienced Indian trader, bound, like ourselves, {27} to the American Alps, the Rocky Mountains, and we joined company with him, and it was very lucky that we did. Our minds were not entirely easy. We were about to leave our peaceable country-men, from whom we had received many attentions and much kindness, to go into a dark region of savages, of whose customs, manners, and language, we were entirely ignorant,—to go we knew not whither,—to encounter we knew not what. We had already sacrificed our amphibious wagons, the result of so much pains and cost. Here two of our company left us, named Kilham and Weeks. Whether they had any real cause of dissatisfaction with our Captain, or whether they only made that an excuse to quit the expedition and return home early, it is not for me to say. I suspect the abandonment of our travelling vehicles cooled their courage. We rested at Independence ten days; and purchased, by Captain Sublet's advice, two yoke of oxen, and fifteen sheep, as we learnt that we ought not to rely entirely upon transient game from our fire-arms for sustenance, especially as we were now going among a savage people who would regard us with suspicion and dread, and treat us accordingly. From this place we travelled about twenty-five miles a day.

Nothing occurred worth recording, till we arrived at the first Indian settlement, which was about seventy miles from Independence.[31] They appeared to us a harmless people, and not averse to our passing through their country. Their persons were rather under size, and their complexion dark. As they lived near the frontier of the whites, they were not unacquainted with their usages and customs. They have cultivated spots or little farms, {28} on which they raise corn and pumpkins. They generally go out once a year to hunt, accompanied by their women; and on killing the Buffalo, or Bison, what they do not use on the spot, they dry to eat through the winter. To prevent a famine, however, it is their custom to keep a large number of dogs; and they eat them as we do mutton and lamb. This tribe have imitated the white people in having fixed and stationary houses. They stick poles in the ground in a circular form, and cover them with buffalo-skins, and put earth over the whole, leaving at the top an aperture for the smoke, but small enough to be covered with a buffalo-skin in case of rain or snow.—We found here little game; but honey-bees in abundance.