Marriage Relations — Fidelity — Social Conditions — McLoughlin— Douglas — Peter Skeen Ogden — Ermatinger — Thomas McKay — Duncan Finlayson — Gairdner and Tolmie — Pambrun — McKinlay — Black — Rae— McLoughlin Junior — Lewes — Dunn — Roberts — Barclay — Manson — McLeod — Bernie, Grant, McBean, McDonald, Max­well, Ballbnden, and McTavish — Patriots and Liberals — Attitude toward the Settlers — The Blessed Beavers.

 

So long and so conspicuously before the world stood the metropolitan post of the Pacific, so unique was its position, and so mighty its influence on the settlement and occupation of Oregon, that although I have often briefly noticed the place and its occupants, a closer scrutiny, and further familiarity with its inner life and the characters of its occupants, seem not undesirable or uninteresting at this juncture.

Up to August 1836, Fort Vancouver was a bachelor establishment in character and feeling, if not in fact. The native women who held the relation of wives to the officers of the company were in no sense equal to their station; and this feature of domestic life in Oregon was not a pleasing one. It was with the company a matter of business, but with the individuals it was something different. To be forever debarred from the society of intelligent women of their own race; to become the fathers of half-breed children, with no prospect of transmitting their names to posterity with increasing dignity, as is every right-minded man’s desire; to accumulate fortunes to be devoted to anything but ennoblement—such was the present life and the visible future of these gentlemen. The connection was so evidently and purely a business one that, as I have before stated, the native wives and children were excluded from the officers’ table, and from social intercourse with visitors, living retired in apartments of their own, and keeping separate tables.

Not to be degraded by conditions so anomalous presupposes a character of more than ordinary strength and loftiness; and this, a close scrutiny of the lives of the principal officers of the company in Oregon will show. But if there was present no higher motive, they were compelled to a life of comparative virtue by way of example to their subordinates. He who respected not his own marriage relations, or those of others, must suffer for it, either by incurring the wrath of the company, or the vengeance of the natives, or both. Licentiousness could not be tolerated, and this was one reason why, with so many discordant elements in the service, such perfect order was maintained. And this discipline was as rigidly enforced outside the fort as within it.

Notwithstanding the conjugal relations here described, society at Fort Vancouver embraced many happy elements, and numbered among its members men who would have graced a court.

Foremost among these, we may be sure, was John McLoughlin, always a pleasing character to contemplate. On the consolidation of the Northwest and Hudson’s Bay fur companies, he had been sent to Oregon as chief factor and virtual governor of the great Northwest. He was born in the city of Quebec, of Irish parentage, in 1784, and educated in Paris for the profession of medicine. He entered the Northwest Company at an early age, and while in their service was stationed at several posts, and finally at Fort Frances, on Lake of the Woods, from which station he was transferred in 1824 to the Columbia River.

Finding Fort George unsuitable for a permanent establishment, such as he desired, he founded Fort Vancouver in 1824-5, leaving the old post at the mouth of the river in charge of Donald Manson. The selection of the new site was fortunate; prosperity reigned, and the days at Fort Vancouver were of the pleasantest in the early annals of the Northwest Coast. Here he held sway for many years, absolute monarch of the district of the Columbia, comprising all the Hudson’s Bay trapping-grounds west of the Rocky Mountains, and extending as far south and north as the trapping parties ventured to penetrate.

Of McLoughlin’s personal appearance almost every visitor who came to Fort Vancouver has left a sketch. All agree in representing him as of commanding presence, partly the effect of a tall, well-formed person, somewhat inclined to stoutness, flowing white hair, and a benevolent expression of countenance. He seems to have become gray early in life, for he was only thirty-nine when he came to Oregon. To this fine personal appearance lie added courtly manners, and great affability in conversation. With the air of one monarch-born, he was fitted to govern men both by awe and love. Such was the autocrat of the Columbia when he first became known to American traders, missionaries, and settlers. White men and red alike revered him.

He prevented wars, upheld right and justice, and ruled with a strong, firm hand. Perhaps there is no more difficult office to fill than that of sole arbiter, not only by reason of the numerous cares attending it, but because the struggle of a single will to maintain the mastery of the many requires a great expenditure of mental force. Absolute monarchs must be strict disciplinarians; to relax in the least is to encourage a freedom fatal to their influence. McLoughlin possessed and acted on this knowledge; and like other potentates, acquired a certain quickness of temper that made him the terror of evil-doers, from the trader to the ploughboy.

This unlimited power carried with it unlimited responsibility, and placed McLoughlin in very delicate positions, not alone with regard to his business with the company, but also in dealings with and treatment of those who had no connection with the company, and especially Americans, with whom, on account of the political situation of the Oregon Territory, he was especially careful to be in friendly relations, as well for the honor of the company as from a nice sense of justice. Yet it will be seen that he dared to discriminate, as in the cases of Kelley and Young. His liberality of sentiment and freedom from sectarian prejudices were proofs equally of a noble nature and a cultivated mind, and his energy and genial disposition placed him foremost in every good work.

I might have some doubts as to the propriety of attributing so many high qualities to a single character, were it not that every authority I turn to—and they are numerous—bears me out in it, and compels me to record some small portion of the almost universal praise. McLoughlin did not always please, but in the end most people came to say with Finlayson, “By the light of maturer years, and considering the circumstances under which he was placed, I cannot but express my utmost admiration of his character.”

While McLoughlin was at Fort William, on Lake Superior, James Douglas, a youth of seventeen, was sent there from Scotland, and placed in the service of the company. McLoughlin was to him as an elder brother. For years they were constantly associated.

Tall like McLoughlin, but unlike the doctor he was dark and grave, as was the Black Douglas, the strongest pillar of the Scottish throne. Unlike the doctor, too, he was not quick or enthusiastic, but painstaking, cool, methodical, and resolute. His manners were by some thought pompous; but courtly bearing, in a man of his size and gravity of deportment, must partake somewhat of pomp. I think heimpressed all the early settlers of Oregon as being much less approachable than the doctor, while at the same time they could but admire his bearing toward them.

Next in rank at Fort Vancouver was Peter Skeen Ogden, son of Chief Justice Ogden of Quebec. His father had been a loyalist, in early times, in New York, and had emigrated to Canada. Young Ogden was for a short time in the service of Mr Astor, and later of the Northwest Company, from which he was transferred to the Hudson’s Bay Company. He had been active in establishing posts and negotiating commercial relations with Indian tribes. In one of his expeditions he discovered the Humboldt River. Ogden was a contrast in every way to McLoughlin and Douglas, being short, dark-skinned, and rather rough in his manner, but lively and witty, and a favorite with everybody. He died at Oregon City in 1854, aged sixty years.

Frank Ermatinger was another person of note at Vancouver; a stout Englishman, jovial and companionable, but rather too much given to strong drink. He was a successful trader, and was sent out to compete with the American fur companies in the Flathead and Nez Percé countries. Afterward, when Oregon City had been established, he took charge of the company’s business there, and figured a little in American affairs, being much esteemed by the settlers. Allan, a brother clerk, says he was sometimes styled Bardolph at the fort, from the color and size of his nose; that he was fond of talking, and would address himself to the governor in all humors when others stood aloof, bearding the lion in his den, as the clerks called it, and being met sometimes with a growl. “Frank,” said the governor, “does nothing but bow, wow, wow! ”

One of the most noted story-tellers of the bachelor’s hall was Thomas McKay, a stepson of Mc­Loughlin—for the doctor’s wife was an Ojibway woman, formerly the wife of Alexander McKay, who was lost on the Tonquin. Thomas McKay acquired a reputation for daring which made him the terror of the Indians. “Vancouver, said he often spoke of the death of his father with the bitter animosity and love of ven­geance inherited he declared he would yet be known on this coast as the avenger of blood. But had he been in truth so bloody-minded he could hardly have been so success­ful a trader. He was undoubtedly brave, and led many a trading party into the dreaded Blackfoot country; and was accustomed to amuse the clerks at Fort Vancouver with his wonderful adventures, In telling a story, says Allan, he invariably commenced, “It rained, it rained; and it blew, it blew”—often throwing in by way of climax, “and, my God, how it did snow!” quite regardless of the unities.

McKay was tall, dark, and powerful in appearance, and often strange in his deportment. Perhaps the tragical fate of his father had impressed him, as well as the recollection that in his own veins ran savage blood. His first wife was a Chinook, the mother of William McKay of Pendleton, who was brought up in McLoughlin’s household, and afterward sent to the east to be educated. His second wife, the mother of the famous scout, Donald McKay, half-brother of William McKay, was a half-breed daughter of Montoure, a confidential clerk of the company. They were married at Vancouver by Blanchet.

Duncan Finlayson, one of the many Scotchmen in the company’s service, came to Fort Vancouver in 1831, remaining there until 1837. It is believed by those who know best that the council in London were for some reason dissatisfied with McLoughlin’s management, and sent out Finlayson to keep an eye on him. He had no direct charge, yet was consulted on all points by the head of the department. Matters of this kind were kept close at Fort Vancouver. By the light of subsequent events, however, it seems probable that the London council were dissatisfied with the invasion of the territory west of the Rocky Mountains by the American companies, and desired more vigorous opposition. But McLoughlin, however irritated, was too just to visit his anger upon the company’s agent, who remained at Fort Vancouver on the most amicable terms with its governor.

Previous to 1833 there had been no physician at Fort Vancouver, except Doctor McLoughlin, who, through the epidemic of 1830 and the several seasons of fever that followed, suffered much fatigue from care of the sick, and much annoyance from the interruption of his business. In 1833 two young surgeons came out from Scotland, Gairdner and Tolmie. They had for their patron Sir William Hooker. Gairdner had been studying under the celebrated Ehrenberg. He was surgeon at Fort Vancouver from 1833 to 1835, but being troubled with hemorrhage of the lungs, went to the Hawaiian Islands in the autumn of the latter year, where he died. Being a young man of high attainments, his death was much deplored. Dr Gairdner made a study of the salmon of the Columbia River, and his authority on their habits is still high.

William Frazer Tolmie, his associate, was from the University of Glasgow, and made botany a study. He had been at Fort Vancouver but a few months when he was assigned to the post on Millbank Sound. Returning to Fort Vancouver in 1836, he served in the medical department for several years.

Thus we see that there was no lack of good society at Fort Vancouver. Besides the residents, there were many gentlemen scattered over the country at the different posts, and in the field as traders, leading trapping parties, and carrying on commercial warfare with the American companies, and usually getting the better of them, owing to a superior organization and a better quality of goods.

Prominent among the chief clerks who had charge of posts in the interior was Pierre C. Pambrun, for several years in charge of Fort Walla Walla, where he dispensed hospitality with a free hand.

Archibald McKinlay, who succeeded Pambrun at Walla Walla, was another Scotchman who had been in the service of the Northwest Company. Genial and stout-hearted, he was a worthy successor of the favorite Pambrun, and the friend and ally afterward of the American missionaries in the upper country. He possessed that very necessary acquirement in an Indian country, knowledge of the native character.

I am aware that it was a common belief among; the early settlers, because the Hudson’s Bay people were less frequently attacked than others, that they enjoyed immunity; but such was not the case. Nothing but their uniform just treatment, and the firmness and intrepidity of the leaders and officers in charge, preserved this apparent security. Except in the vicinity of Fort Vancouver, or among the diseased and wasted tribes of the Willamette and Columbia valleys, there needed to be exercised sleepless vigilance, and a scrupulous regard to the superstitions of the different tribes.

Chief Factor Samuel Black, in charge of Fort Kamloop at the junction of Fraser and Thompson rivers, was a great favorite, and many were the stories told of him. His murder by one of the fort Indians shows that, though he had been among them many years, he was no more safe from their fury or superstition than were others.

William Glen Rae, a large, handsome man, educated at Edinburgh, was a native of the Orkney Islands. From 1834 to 1837 he was employed as trader at the different posts, and was then appointed head clerk at. Fort Vancouver. In 1838 he married Maria Eloise, daughter of Dr McLoughlin, soon after which he was. appointed chief trader, and sent to Stikeen River in 1840 to receive from the Russians their fort at that, place, leased to the Hudson’s Bay Company. He left the post at Stikeen in charge of John McLoughlin, son of Dr McLoughlin and brother of his wife. In 1841 he was sent to California to take charge of the company’s business, which continued under his management until his death by his own hand in 1846.

John McLoughlin, junior, second son of Dr Mc­Loughlin, was but a young man to be placed in charge of a fort, and appears to have been in no way worthy of the name he bore. About a year after Mr Rae left him at Stikeen he was murdered by his own men, Canadians and kanakas. An account of the affair is given in the History of the Northwest Coast. One who knew him called him too young and hot-headed for such service; but there is reason to think that he brought about his own death by his debaucheries. Sir George Simpson, who investigated the murder, treated it in such a way as to incur the life-long displeasure of Dr McLoughlin. This, however, was not the only cause for offence, a tacit disagreement having existed for at least ten years between the resident governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company and the ‘emperor of the west.’ Sir George was of humble though respectable origin, a Scottish family of Caithness, and his father was a school-master. He was in the possession of no personal qualities that could awe McLoughlin.

The fop of the Columbia district was John Lee Lewes, an old Northwester, who after having been many years at the several northern posts was placed in charge of the district of McKenzie River, and afterward at Fort Colville. He was a man of fine personal appearance, and possessed many good qualities. He had the misfortune to lose his right hand by the accidental discharge of a gun. When he retired from the service in 1846 he proceeded to Australia with the intention of remaining there; but habit was too strong upon him, and he returned and took up his abode at Red River. A son of Mr Lewes was the first representative from Vancouver county when Oregon territory was organized.

John Dunn, who wrote a book on Oregon made up partly from his own observations but more largely from those of others, was in charge of Fort Mc­Loughlin, on Milbank Sound, in 1830; but later ho was at Fort George on the Columbia, where he remained till about 1840. Dunn was one of two young naval apprentices sent out in the ship Ganymede in 1830. George B. Roberts of Cathlamet was the other. This latter gentleman was for many years clerk at Fort Vancouver, being cognizant of a long series of interesting events. His Recollections in manuscript, from which I have made so many extracts, has proved very valuable to me.

 

SOME WRITERS.

Alexander Caulfield Anderson was born at Calcutta in India, in 1814, and educated in England, At about twenty years of age he entered the service of the Hudson’s Bay Company on the Northwest Coast, but was not so much at Fort Vancouver as north of that fort. From his manuscript History of the Northwest Coast much valuable and interesting matter has been obtained.

Doctor Forbes Barclay came to Oregon in the service of the company in 1839, and remained at Fort Vancouver till 1850, when he became a resident of Oregon City and a naturalized American citizen. Barclay was a native of the Shetland Islands, and was born on Christmas-day, 1812. While but a lad he went on a cruise with Sir John Ross to the Arctic regions, in search of a northwest passage. The vessel was wrecked, and nearly all on board were lost. Among those who escaped and were picked up by the Eskimos was young Barclay. He was taken to the island of Fisco, where he lived with the Danes for several months, finally returning to Scotland on a vessel which touched at the island. Resuming his studies, he graduated at the royal college of surgeons, in London, in July 1838, and left the following year for Oregon, where he arrived in the spring of 1840.

Donald Manson was also a native of Scotland, who had received a good education, and in his seventeenth year, 1817; entered the service of the Hudson’s Bay Company. He remained on the east side of the. mountains till 1823, when he accompanied Black into the country now known as the Cassiar mining district, after which he returned to Athabasca, and in the autumn of 1824 was ordered to the Columbia River, arriving at Fort Vancouver in April 1825. In the summer of 1827 he assisted in the erection of Fort Langley, the first trading post established by the company west of the Rocky Mountains and north of Fort Vancouver. He returned to Fort Vancouver in 1828, in which year two American vessels, the brig Owyhee, Captain Dominus, and the schooner Convoy, Captain Tomson, entered the Columbia to trade. Manson was sent to occupy the deserted post at Astoria, and oppose the interlopers. He found the old fort in so ruinous a state that he lived in a tent for the season.

In 1829 Manson accompanied Ogden to establish Fort Simpson, north of Langley; and in 1830 a post on Milbank Sound, Fort McLoughlin, where he remained in charge until 1839, when he was granted a year’s absence. Returning in 1841, he succeeded Mr Black, who had just been murdered at Kamloop; and in 1842 he succeeded John McLoughlin, murdered at Stikeen. In 1844 he was appointed to the command of the district of New Caledonia, where he remained as executive officer until 1857, when he resigned. Soon afterward he purchased a farm at Champoeg.

Donald McLeod, born about 1811, in one of the western isles of the county of Ross, Scotland, came to Oregon in the company’s service in 1835 by sea. He was leading trapping parties in the Snake country with Thomas McKay in 1836, and remained in this occupation ten years, when he settled on a farm in the Tualatin Plains, where he died February 26, 1873, leaving a large family.

The lives of these men, separated by thousands of miles from the civilized world, and entirely deprived of the companionship of cultivated women, might easily have been barbarous through the lack of example and emulation which everywhere exists in the world of intellect and refinement. The highest praise that can be bestowed upon them is that under these temptations they never forgot themselves. As nearly as possible McLoughlin maintained the fashions of manor life in England, the hospitality, the courtesy, the riding, hunting, and conversation. A dinner at Fort Vancouver was a dignified and social affair, not lacking either in creature comforts or table-talk. As early as 1836 there was good living at this post; plenty of cattle, sheep, swine, salmon, game, and an ample garden. The table was set off with a display of fine English glass, and ruddy wines. No liquors were furnished. McLoughlin never drank either wine or liquor, except on great occasions, to open the fes­tivities. He presided, and led the conversation, the others being seated according to rank. No more time was consumed at table than was convenient; there was present neither gluttony nor intemperance. If guests were present the chief devoted some time to them; after dinner he showed them the farm and stock, offered them horses and guns, or perhaps made up a party to escort them wherever they wished to go. Did they remain at the fort, there was the oppor­tunity to study a whole museum of curious things from all parts of the savage and civilized world, all kinds of weapons, dresses, ornaments, mechanisms, and art. When these were exhausted there were the pipe and books, and the long-drawn tales of evening. Where were met together so many men of adventurous lives, mariners who had circumnivigated the globe, leaders of trapping parties through thousands of miles of wilderness, among tribes of hostile savages, in heat and cold, in sunshine and storm, contending always with the inhospitable whims of mother nature, there could be but little flagging in the conversation. Sometimes the story was a tragedy, sometimes a comedy; but no matter what the occasion for mirth, discipline was always preserved and propriety regarded.

Many Americans found shelter and entertainment at Vancouver, as we shall see, most of whom have made suitable acknowledgment, testifying to the generous assistance given to every enterprise not in conflict with the company’s business. Whether it was a rival trapping party like Jedediah Smith’s, which found itself in trouble, or an unlucky trader like Wyeth, a missionary, a naturalist, or a secret agent of the United States in disguise, one universal law of brotherhood embraced them all. Their charity sometimes went so far as to clothe as well as house and feed wandering stars of American wit, as in the case of Thomas J. Farnham, who visited Fort Vancouver in 1839.

Likewise there were other resources at hand. The annual ship brought books, reviews, files of newspapers; and the mail was brought overland by express from York Factory, Red River, and Canada. With every such arrival the leading topics of the time were discussed, more closely perhaps from the length of time before the next batch of subjects could be expected. Very early in Fort Vancouver life, owing to the relative positions of the two governments, British and American institutions and ideas were compared, and defended or condemned according to the views of the disputants. But after the advent of the first missionaries and settlers as an American element, these discussions became more frequent, and in fact developed a great deal of patriotism on one side, and a liberality not to be expected on the other. John Dunn relates that in those days, from 1834 to 1843, there were two parties at Fort Vancouver, patriots, and liberals, or philosophers. The British, or pa­triots, maintained that the governor was too chivalrous, that his generosity was thrown away, and would be unrequited, that he was nourishing those who would by and by rise and question his own authority, and the British right to Fort Vancouver itself. This party cited the American free trapper, and the advocates of the border lynch-law, as specimens of Ameri­can civilization. They had no faith in American missionaries, nor approbation for American traders. In short, the term American with them was synony­mous with boorishness and dishonesty.

The liberal party, of which McLoughlin was understood to be the leader, though they admitted that Americans were not exempt from charges of trickery and tyranny, being slaveholders, and sometimes even as states repudiating honest debts; and that the half- apostolical and half-agricultural character of the missionaries was not, in their judgment, the highest example of clerical dignity; and that the American traders did domineer over and corrupt the natives; yet he thought that Americans ought not to be excluded, because they had some claims to the right of occupancy, claims really existing, though feeble, which would make it both impolitic and unjust to prevent them any possession. And as to American lynch-law and other usages repugnant to justice and humanity, they were rather exceptions to the American code than examples of American principles of legislation, which in commercial and civil matters was, generally speak­ing, just and humane, and from which even British legislation might derive some useful hints. They had hopes, too, that the Americans, by the influence of the gentlemen fur-traders, would become more civilized. Such sentiments amused Farnham when he was at. Fort Vancouver, and troubled many later comers, who felt their national dignity assaulted by British patronage of this sort.

There was an Arcadian simplicity about Fort Vancouver life, in its early days, that awakens something of poetry and sentiment. It is a bit of feudal life in the wilderness. The fort is the duke’s castle; the other posts the dependent baronies; the leaders of trapping parties the chiefs who sally forth to do battle for their lord. Every summer, when the season is at its height, the fortress gates are opened to receive, not the array of knights in armor, but the brigade of gay and happy trappers home from the mountains with the year’s harvest of furs. It is like the return of the conquering heroes. It does not need a bugle at the gates to announce the arrival. A courier has been sent in advance to give notice. When within two miles of the fort, the song of the boatmen can be distinctly heard, keeping time to the oars bright flashing like Toledo blades. The company's flag waves proudly from the tall staff. Everybody is eager and excited, from the servants to the grand master himself, who stands at the landing with the rest. Presently the boats sweep round the last point into full view. The number depends on the success of the year’s traffic; there may be twenty- live, or less; and each can carry fifteen or twenty tons. Down they come with the current, in perfect order, amidst shouting and cheering from the shore, every voyageur in gala dress, ribbons fluttering from Canadian’caps, and deerskin suits ornamented with beads and fringes.

The arrival of the brigade was the great event of the year at Fort Vancouver, and as we have noticed before, the occasion when McLoughlin relaxed his abstemious rule, and drank a glass of wine to open the festivities, which were expected to last twenty-four hours, and during which everybody did as he pleased. There was in the gentlemen’s dining-hall a grand dinner on such occasions, at which jollity, anecdote, and wit enlivened the table more than the red wine that was drunk.

Another picturesque feature of this early Hudson’s Bay life in Oregon was that of the chief trader’s caravan when it moved through the Indian country; or when the governor himself made a tour through the Willamette Valley, as occurred at rare intervals. On these occasions Indian women were conspicuous. In addition to the trappers’ wives, there was the grand dame, the wife of the bourgeois, or leader. Seated astride the finest horse, whose trappings were ornamented with colored quills, beads, and fringes to which hung tiny bells that tinkled with every mo­tion, herself dressed in a petticoat of the finest blue broadcloth, with embroidered scarlet leggings, and moccasons stiff with the most costly beads, her black braided hair surmounted by a hat trimmed with gay ribbon, or supporting drooping feathers, she presented a picture, if not as elegant as that of a lady of the sixteenth century at a hawking party, yet quite as striking and brilliant.

When the caravan was in progress it was a panorama of gayety, as each man of the party, from the chief trader and clerk down to the last trapper in the train, filed past with his ever-present and faithful help­mate in her prettiest dress. After them came the Indian boys, driving the pack-horses, with goods and camp utensils. When the governor went on a visit, it was like a royal promenade; the camp equipage con­sisted of everything necessary for comfortable lodging, and a bountiful table, the cook being an important member of the numerous retinue. Here was feudalism on the western seaboard, as I before remarked. The Canadian farmers were serfs to all intents and purposes, yet with such a kindly lord that they scarcely felt their bondage; or, if they felt it, it was for their good.

So absolute was McLoughlin’s authority that pre­vious to the settlement of Americans in the Willamette Valley no legal forms had been thought necessary, except such as by the company’s grant were so made; the governor and council having power to try and punish all offenders belonging to the company or any crimes committed in any of “the said company’s plantations, forts, factories, or places of trade within Hudson’s Bay territory.” The Canadians and other servants of the company yielded without question to the company’s chartered right to judge and punish. But with the Americans it was different. The charter forbade any British subject from trespassing upon the company’s territory for purposes of trade; but it could not forbid Americans or other people. The charter permitted the company to go to war, on its own account, with any unchristianized nation; but the Americans could not be styled unchristianized, though they might, if provoked, become belligerent. The- Americans, though so lacking in civilized conceptions according to the ideas of the gentlemen at Fort Van­couver, were stubborn in their legal rights, and were, besides, turbulent in their habits, and might put thoughts of insubordination into the minds of the company’s people.

Foreseeing the troubles that would arise on this account, McLoughlin took timely measures to provide against them, and procured, by act of parliament, the appointment of justices of the peace in different parts of the country, James Douglas filling that office at Fort Vancouver. These justices were empowered to adjudicate upon minor offences, and to impose punishment; to arrest criminals guilty of serious crimes and send them to Canada for trial; and also to try and give judgment in civil suits where the amount in dispute did not exceed two hundred pounds; and in case of non-payment, to imprison the debtor at their own forts, or in the jails of Canada.

Dunn relates that in the discussions at Fort Vancouver the liberal party had an advantage, even in his estimation, when the neglect of the home government, and of the British and Foreign Missionary Society, touching the conversion and civilization of the natives, was brought up. The patriots were forced to admit that this state of affairs was highly censurable, and that since England had so grossly neglected the natives, they could make no proper objection to American missionaries. Even should they prove to be as bad as other Americans in the country, contact with the British residents would render them more gentlemanly, tolerant, and honest.

Sunday was observed both in the matter of reli­gious services and suspension of labor; but the latter part of the day was allowed for amusements. After the first American missionaries came to Oregon, the doctor questioned whether it was right to be without a chaplain at Fort Vancouver, or dignified for so great a company to pay so little regard to religious forms. The American ministers might not be to his taste, but some there should be who were. These Americans, uncouth perhaps in dress and bearing, had set themselves to teach not only the children of the Canadians, but those within the fort, his children, and the sons and daughters of gentlemen high in the company’s service.

Should he not have to acknowledge that they had been missionaries to him? Such an admission might never pass his lips; but in many ways he must ac­knowledge his approbation of the work, and his heart was full of friendliness toward them, which alas! they did not always requite with kindness. They could not be so liberal toward him as he had been with them. He followed their lead whenever he saw good in it, even when he was doubtful of its being the best or the safest course, because he could not refuse to encourage the right.

As early as 1836 the lever was applied to the foundations of the old society that was destined to overturn it. The boasted civilization of this English company, aristocratic and cultured, could not stand before the face of one white woman. The Nereid, coming from England and the Sandwich Islands, brought a chaplain to Fort Vancouver—a direct result, it may reasonably be inferred, of the American Mission. The name of this new officer on the governor’s staff was Rev. Herbert Beaver, an appropriate name for the service, and one which the junior clerks undoubtedly repeated among themselves with the highest satisfaction. Mr Beaver had been chaplain of a regiment at Santa Lucia, in the West Indies. He was of the fox­hunting type of English clergymen, and had been much diverted by the manners of his fellow-passenger from Honolulu, Mr Lee, whom he was constantly in the habit of quizzing. From the glimpse Dunn gives of the sentiment of Bachelor’s Hall, his gibes at his Methodist brother must have provoked responsive mirth. But the inmates of the fort, grave, dignified, disciplined, and accustomed to respect, did not always escape the reverend gentleman’s sallies of wit; nor, as it proved, his strictures on their immoral and uncivilized condition.

Gray, who saw him at Fort Vancouver, describes him as rather a small person, with a light complexion and feminine voice, who made pretensions to oratory, entirely unsupported by the facts. Also, his ideas of clerical dignity were such that he felt himself defiled by association with the gentlemen at Fort Vancouver. McLoughlin was uncivil, the clerks boors, the women savages. Here was a fine beginning of English missionary work! And yet the feudal lords could not deny it. There was Mrs Jane Beaver, who had accompanied her husband. They might kick the chaplain, but the chaplain’s wife had a way with her, recognized in all Christian communities, of calling such manner of living vile. These lords of the Hudson’s Bay Company were compelled to chew the reflective cud, and to stifle their warmth at clerical interference, while they slowly made up their minds to take the only alternative left them, if they would associate with clergymen and clergymen’s wives. It was not enough for the Beavers that the governor, the chief factor, chief traders, and clerks attended the Sunday service and observed decorum. There was an abomination within the walls of the fort that Christianity could not tolerate.

Had Beaver’s objections to the domestic relations of Fort Vancouver been his sole ground of criticism, his natural flippancy and professional arrogance might, have been tolerated. But he found many things that were wrong in the practices of the Hudson’s Bay Company, and so reported to the Aborigines Pro­tection Society at London, to which he complained that his attempts to introduce civilization and Chris­tianity among one or more of the neighboring tribes had not succeeded, because his efforts had not been seconded by the company. The truth was, that Beaver was quite too nice for the task of civilizing Indians in the vicinity of Fort Vancouver. He was dissatisfied with the plain quarters assigned him, the parsonage being only a cottage built of rough lum­ber, uncarpeted except with Indian mats, which Mrs Beaver pronounced filthy, and unfurnished with any of the elegancies of an English parsonage. He despised and disliked the natives, and abhored the practice of the gentlemen at Fort Vancouver of cohabiting with them.

Roberts says that Beaver kept a good table, although his salary was only £200 a year; but every­thing was furnished him except clothes. He was kind enough to invite the young clerk to dinner frequently, but Roberts thinks the risk imposed upon his soul in making him sponsor-general to a motley crowd of the vilest of the vile, whom the chaplain insisted on bap tizing in his character of missionary, more than offset the dinners.

While Beaver baptized reluctant heathen, white red, and mixed, in the intervals of his hunting and other amusements, Mrs Jane Beaver held herself scornfully aloof from the wickedness of private life at Fort Vancouver. When she had been present about six weeks, there arrived from across the continent two other white women, wives of missionaries also, who re­mained as guests of the company from September to November, and who soon made themselves acquainted with its social life, not in the manner of Mrs Beaver, but in a humble, kindly way, which won for them the deference of every gentleman from the governor down.

Finally, in January 1837, Mr Beaver had the satisfaction of celebrating the church of England marriage-service at the nuptials of James Douglas and Nelia Connolly. McLoughlin too thoroughly despised Beaver to submit to remarriage at his hand, but to quiet the scandal which the chaplain so loved to scatter in Europe, he had the civil rite performed by Douglas in his capacity of justice of the peace. Whereupon, in the nostrils of Mrs Beaver the social atmosphere of Fort Vancouver became somewhat purified of its aboriginal stench, though to the pure-minded and chivalrous gentlemen of the fort the Beavers were far more obnoxious than the aboriginals.

Beaver returned to England in 1838, having been an inmate of the fort a year and a half. His departure was hastened by an unusual outburst of the doctor’s disgust. It was the chaplain’s duty to forward a written report to the London council, which he was required to place in McLoughlin’s hands before sending. On reading one of these reports, the contents so incensed the doctor that he demanded an explanation on meeting the writer in the fort yard. The reverend gentlemen replied: “Sir, if you wish to know why a cow’s tail grows downward, I cannot tell you; I can only cite the fact.”

Up went the governor’s cane of its own volition, and before McLoughlin was aware of it he had bestowed a good sound blow upon the shoulders of the impudent divine. Beaver shouted to his wife for his pistols, long-barrelled flintlocks; but on reflection concluded he would not kill the doctor just then. Next day there was an auction of the effects of Captain Home, drowned in the Columbia; and while the people were gathered there, McLoughlin, by the magnanimity of his nature, was constrained to do penance. “Mr Beaver,” said he, stepping up to the chaplain before them all, “I make this public apology for the indignity I laid upon you yesterday.” “Sir, I will not accept your apology,” exclaimed the chaplain, turning upon his heel. Beaver went back to England, and the company sent no more chaplains to Fort Vancouver.

 

 

Fort Vancouver in 1845