Two Years in Oregon Part 13

Like the rest of the world, we answered to the call of the bell, and crowded through into the grand stand to see the races. A circular track of half a mile, the surface of which was already churned into black mud, did not look promising for the comfort of either drivers or riders. The benches of the grand stand were crowded with eager spectators, ladies predominating--the men were lining the track below, while the judges looked down from a high box opposite. The din of the men selling pools on the impending race was deafening, and each of the little auctioneers' boxes where the sales went on was surrounded by a throng of bidders. The first race was for runners, that is gallopers, ridden by boys thirteen or fourteen years old. It was not a grand display to see three or four horses galloping away, dragging their little riders almost on to their necks, and their finishes showed no great art. Then came the trotting races, and these were worth seeing.

Three sulkies came on the track, the driver sitting on a little tray just over his horse's tail, and between two tall, slender wheels.

Catching tight hold of his horse's head, and sticking his feet well in front of him, each driver sent his horse at a sharp trot round the track to open his lungs. Then the bell rang again, the course was cleared, and the drivers turned their horses' heads the same way, and tried to come up to the judges' box in line. Once, twice, they tried; but the bell was silent, and back they had to come, the horses fretting at the bit, and getting flecked with foam in anxiety to be off. The third time the three sulkies were abreast as they pa.s.sed the line, the bell sounded once, and off they tore. The drivers sat still farther back, and the horses laid themselves down to their grand, far-reaching trot. Before two hundred yards was covered one broke into a gallop, and had to be pulled back at once, his adversaries gaining a yard or two before he could be steadied to a trot again. Here they come in the straight run-in, the little black horse slightly in front, the big bay next, but hardly a head between them; the crowd shouts wildly, and the bay breaks trot just at the critical moment, and the black wins the heat, his legs going with the regularity and drive of a steam-engine.

The horses are surrounded by admirers as they are taken out of the sulkies, and led off to be rubbed down and comforted before the next heat comes on. Then follows a running race, and then another heat of the trotting race. This time the bay wins, hard held, and forbidden by a grasp of iron to break into the longed-for gallop. Soon comes the deciding heat, and the excitement grows intense; the pools are selling actively, and speculation is very brisk.

Our sympathies are with the little black; half a hand shorter than his antagonist, and more like a trotting-horse than the tall, thoroughbred bay. But the fates are against him--size and breeding tell, and the bay wins.

Then the band strikes up, and the crowd disperses. Most get back to the city by one of the miscellaneous wagons, or hacks, or omnibuses pressed into the service of the fair; the rest betake themselves to their camping-places among the oak-grubs, after supplying themselves with meat and bread from one or other of the temporary stores set up at one side of the grounds.

[Sidenote: _CRICKET IN PUBLIC._]

This year the visitors had a new sensation in seeing cricket played on the fair-ground, to most of them a new sight. Portland is blessed with a cricket club, mostly supported by the emigrants from the old country.

Corvallis has a similar advantage. The Portlanders, in the pride of their strength, and heralded by a paragraph in the "Oregonian"

newspaper, that the "team selected to beat the Corvallis athletes" had gone up to Corvallis, had come for wool and gone home shorn. So, as a return-match was under discussion, it was determined to accept the invitation of the fair committee and play the return on the fair-grounds for the amus.e.m.e.nt of the visitors. Accordingly, the game was duly played out, and ended again in a one-innings defeat of proud Portland, to the delight of the spectators from the valley, who are generally a little jealous of the airs and graces of the hustling town which calls herself the metropolis of the Northwest. There was some difficulty in keeping the ground clear; the ladies particularly could not comprehend the terrible solecism they were committing in tripping bravely across, to speak, to "point," and chat with the wicket-keeper.

If you could but have seen the horror-stricken faces of one or two of our eleven, accustomed to the rigor of the game at Cambridge, Rugby, or Cheltenham!

CHAPTER XVI.

History of Oregon--First discoverers--Changes of government--Recognition as a Territory--Entrance as a State--Individual histories--"Jottings"-- "Sitting around"--A pioneer in Benton County--How to serve Indian thieves --The white squaw and the chief--Immigration in company--Rafting on the Columbia--The first winter--Early settlement--Indian friends--Indian houses and customs--The Presbyterian colony--The start--Across the plains--Arrival in Oregon--The "whaler" settler--A rough journey--"Ho for the Umpqua!"--A backwoodsman--Compliments--School-teacher provided for--Uncle Lazarus--Rogue River Canon--Valley of Death--Pleasant homes --Changed circ.u.mstances.

Taking note of the civilized and settled condition of so large a part of this State, it is hard to credit that it was only in 1831 that the first attempts at farming in Oregon were made by some of the men in the Hudson Bay Company's service, and that in 1838 the first printing-press arrived. This valued relic is now preserved in a place of honor in the State Capitol building at Salem--more accordant with the spirit of the times than rusty armor or moth-eaten banners.

The early history is somewhat misty, but the following slight sketch is, I believe, accurate:

The coast of Oregon was visited both by British and Spanish navigators in the sixteenth century. In 1778 Captain Cook sailed along the coast.

In 1775 Heceta, and in 1792 Vancouver, both suspected the existence of the Columbia River from the appearance of its estuary. But in 1792 Captain Gray, of Boston, and afterward, in the same year, Captain Baker, an Englishman, entered the estuary itself. It was on Captain Gray's discovery that the United States Government afterward rested its claim to the whole country watered by the great river, the mouth of which he had discovered. But Lieutenant Broughton, of the British Navy, in 1792 or 1793, a very few months after Captain Gray's visit, actually ascended the Columbia for one hundred miles, and laid claim to the country in the name of King George III. In 1804 the American Government expedition of Lewis and Clark crossed the Rocky Mountains, descended the Columbia, and pa.s.sed the winter of 1805-'6 at its mouth; and the records of their discoveries first drew public attention to the country. In 1810 Captain Winship, also from New England, built the first house in Oregon. Astoria was founded in 1811 by John Jacob Astor, of New York, as a trading-port. The British, while the war was raging in 1813, took possession of the post and named it Fort George. Then followed the Hudson Bay Company, who claimed the sovereignty of the country under the terms of their wide charter. They established their headquarters for the North Pacific coast at Vancouver, on the north bank of the Columbia, about one hundred miles from its mouth. There the fort was built, the settlement formed, farming began, and the Governor of the Hudson Bay Territory had his Western home.

In 1832 the first school was opened. Between 1834 and 1837 missionaries of various denominations arrived, bringing cattle with them; and in 1841 Commodore Wilkes visited Oregon on an exploring expedition by order of the United States Government. From 1816 to 1846 the "joint occupancy" of Oregon by the American and British Governments lasted under treaty.

In 1843 the people were for the first time recognized, and united in forming a provisional government, formally accepted at a general election in 1845. By the year 1846 the white population numbered about ten thousand souls, and in that year the Oregon Territory, including both the present State of Oregon and also Washington Territory, was ceded, under the Ashburton Treaty, by the British Government to the United States.

Congress formally recognized the Territory of Oregon in 1848, and in 1849 General Joe Lane entered office as the first Territorial Governor.

His portrait now adorns the Capitol building. And the old general, still erect and in full preservation, in spite of his years and services, has been until this spring of 1881 yet seen and respectfully greeted at many a public gathering.

[Sidenote: _ENTRANCE AS A STATE._]

In 1859 Oregon was admitted into the Union as a sovereign State; the population was 52,465. In 1880 the census gave a total of 174,767 souls, showing an increase of 122,302 in twenty-one years, and an increase of 74,767 over the State census in 1875. But, after all, the history of a State is the history of its people.

Nowadays we enter Oregon within twenty days from Liverpool, having been speeded on our journey by steamships and railroads in continuous connections. Within two years the State expects to have two direct lines of Eastern communication--one by the Northern Pacific, the other by a line through the southeastern corner of the State to Reno, on the Central Pacific--shortening the twenty to sixteen days. Within two years more it is hoped that the Oregon Pacific will make communication at Boise City, Idaho, with independent Eastern lines, and open a still more direct course out to the centers of population and enterprise. But in the early days, from 1846 to 1851, when the tide of settlement ran first this way, their experiences were widely different.

Listen to the tales some of these men tell--not old men yet by any means; the vigor and power of life still burn in most of them, for the dates are but thirty years back. But what a different life these pioneers led then!

Let me sketch the scene and its surroundings where these "jottings round the stove" are made. It is rather a dusty old room, and a rusty old stove in the middle, and rather a dusty and rusty company are gathered round it. Winter-time is upon us; the rain falls in a ceaseless drizzle, and the drops from the eaves patter on the fallen leaves of the plane-trees round the house. The time is after the noon dinner-hour; no work presses, for the fall wheat is all in, and there is a sense of warmth and comfort within, which contrasts with the dim scene without, where the rain-mists obscure the hills and fill the valley with their slowly driving ma.s.ses.

Five or six of us "sit around"--mostly on two legs of the chairs, and our boots are propped up on the ridge round the stove. We don't go much on broadcloth and "biled" shirts, but we prefer stout flannel shirts and brown overalls, with our trousers tucked inside our knee-high boots. Tobacco in one form or the other occupies each one. Carpets we have no use for, and it is good that the arm-chairs are of fir, as the arms are so handy for whittling, there being no loose pieces of soft wood by. But we are all good friends, and I, for one, do not wish for better company for an hour or two "around the stove."

[Sidenote: _A PIONEER IN BENTON COUNTY._]

"So the old man came into Benton County in 1845, did he?"

"Yes, he and his wife and two young children, and took up a claim there three or four miles from town."

"Was there a town then?"

"Not much--just three log-cabins and a hut or so; they called it Marysville; it did not get the name of Corvallis till years after."

"How about the Indians?"

"Well, there were plenty in the valley, Klick-i-tats and Calapooyas--these last were a mean set at that. The valley was all over bunch-gra.s.s waist-high, and the hills were full of elk and deer."

"Had the old man any stock?"

"He had just brought a few with him from Missouri over the Plains, and fine store he set by them. You see the Indians used to come and beg for flour and sugar, and a beef now and then. Some of the neighbors would give them a beef at times, but the old man used to say he hadn't brought no cattle to give to them varmints."

"How did they manage to live at first?"

"Well, the old man used to go off for a week at a time to Oregon City to work on the boats there at his trade of a ship-carpenter. He had to foot it there and back, and pack flour and bacon on his back for his folks, and a tramp of sixty miles at that."

"Did the Indians bother any while he was gone?"

"One time a pack of them came round the cabin and got saucy, finding only the old lady at home. They crowded into the house and began to help themselves, but the old lady she took the axe and soon made them clear out. When the old man came back she told him about it. 'Well,'

says he, 'I reckon I shall have to stop at home a day or two and fix these varmints.' So three or four days afterward back they came.

"The old man he kept out of sight, and the buck they called the chief came in and began to lay hold of anything he fancied.

"Then the old man showed himself in the doorway with his old rifle on his arm. He looked the chief up and down, and then he says to his wife: 'Do you see that bunch of twigs over the fireplace? You take them down, and go through that fellow while the twigs hold together!' And he says to the Indian, 'You raise a finger against that woman, and I'll blow the top of your head off!' So the old lady takes down the willow-twigs, and goes for the Indian for all there was in it, and beats him round and round the house till there wasn't a whole twig in the bunch. Lord!

You should have seen the whole crowd of twenty or thirty Indians splitting with laughter to see the white squaw go for the chief. I tell you, sir, that Indian made the quickest time on record back to the camp as soon as she let him go, and that crowd never bothered that cabin any more. Now, wasn't that much better than shooting and fighting, and kicking up the worst kind of a muss?"

"Well, I guess so. Did he have any more bother with the Indians?"

"Not a great deal. You see they were a mean lot, and would lay hands on anything they could steal; but there wasn't a great deal of fight in them. One time they had been robbing one of the neighbors of some cattle, and they went and told the old man. He went up all alone to the Indian camp with his rifle, and picked out the man he wanted out of a crowd of fifty of them; and he took him and tied him to a white-oak tree, and laid on to him with a sapling till he thought he'd had enough, and not one of the whole crowd dared raise a hand against him.

Now the old gentleman's got three thousand acres of land and all he wants. How's that for an early settler?"

"Why, pretty good. But you came over the Plains yourself, didn't you?"

"Yes; I was but a little shaver then, in 1845. We came by way of the Dalles."

"What sort of a crowd had you?"

[Sidenote: _RAFTING ON THE COLUMBIA._]

"Well, there was my father, Nahum his name was, and my four brothers, all older than I was, and there was the Watsons and the Chambers and their families in the company. We crossed the Plains all right and got to the Dalles. There were thirteen wagons in the party, and we rafted them and the cattle and all the rest of it down the Columbia."

"How on earth did you make a raft big enough?"