A History of Oregon, 1792-1849 Part 9

_Int. 16._--"State whether the dispute about this matter was the cause of the dissolution of the firm of Smith, Jackson & Sublet, to which you refer in your cross-examination." (Objected to as above.)

_Ans._--"I do not know; that was the report among mountain men."

With these specimens of testimony on both sides, I will venture a general statement drawn from the whole facts developed.

About the time, or perhaps one year before, the notice that the joint occupancy of the country west of the Rocky Mountains was given by the American government to that of the British, the Hudson's Bay Company, as such, had made extensive preparations and arrangements to hold the country west of the Rocky Mountains. This arrangement embraced a full and complete organization of the Indian tribes under the various traders and factors at the various forts in the country.

The probability of a Mexican war with the United States, and such influences as could be brought to bear upon commissioners, or the treaty-making power of the American government, would enable them to secure this object. In this they failed. The Mexican war was successfully and honorably closed. The Hudson's Bay Company's claims are respected, or at least mentioned as in existence, in the treaty of 1846, that the 49th parallel should be the boundary _of the two national dominions_.

On the strength of their supposed possessory right, they remain quietly in their old forts and French pig-pens, take a full inventory of their old Indian salmon-houses, and watch the progress of American improvement upon this coast, till 1863, when the American people are in the midst of a death struggle for its civil existence. They then for the third time "water" this monstrosity under the name of "'The International Financial Society, limited,' are prepared to receive subscriptions for the issue at par of capital stock in the Hudson's Bay Company, incorporated by royal charter, 1670," fixing the nominal stock of the Hudson's Bay Company at 2,000,000; and taking from this amount 1,930,000, they offer it for sale under this new t.i.tle in shares of 20 each, claiming as belonging to them [_i.e._, the Hudson's Bay Company] 1,400,000 square miles, or upward of 896,000,000 acres of land, and, after paying all expenses, an income of 81,000 in ten years, up to the 31st of May--over four per cent. on the 2,000,000. This vast humbug is held up for the English public to invest in,--a colonization scheme to enrich the favored shareholders of that old English aristocratic humbug chartered by Charles II. in 1670.

In the whole history of that company there has never been any investigation of its internal policy so thorough as in the present proceedings. In fact, this is the first time they have ventured to allow a legal investigation into their system of trade and their rights of property. They have grown to such enormous proportions, and controlled so vast a country, that the government and treasury of the United States has become, in their estimation, a mere appendage to facilitate their Indian trade and financial speculations. From our recent purchases of Russian territory, it becomes an important question to every American citizen, and especially our statesmen, to make himself familiar with so vast an influence under the British flag, and extending along so great an extent of our northern frontier. Should they establish, by their own interested and ignorant testimony, their present claims, there will be no end to their unreasonable demands, for they have dotted the whole continent with their trading-posts. They claim all that is supposed to be of any value to savage and civilized man. The English nation without its Hudson's Bay Company's old traps and hunting-parties would have no claim west of the Rocky Mountains, yet, for the sake of these, it has almost ventured a third war with our American people in sending from its sh.o.r.es, instead of land pirates, under the bars and stars, the red flag of the Hudson's Bay Company. The two flags should be folded together and laid up in the British Museum, as a lasting monument of British injustice.

I apprehend, from a careful review of all this testimony of the forty-one witnesses who were on the part of the Hudson's Bay Company, and the forty-two on the part of the United States, that the whole policy of the company has been thoroughly developed; yet, at the same time, without a long personal acquaintance with their manner of doing business, it would be difficult to comprehend the full import of the testimony given, though I apprehend the commissioners will have no very difficult task to understand the humb.u.g.g.e.ry of the whole claim, as developed by the testimony of the clerks in London and the investigation at head-quarters. As to the amount of award, I would not risk one dollar to obtain a share in all they get from our government. On the contrary, a claim should be made against them for damages and trespa.s.s upon the American citizens, as also the lives of such as they have caused to be murdered by their influence over the Indians.

The telegraph has informed us that the commissioners have awarded to the Hudson's Bay Company, $450,000, and to the Puget Sound concern, $200,000. We have no change to make in our opinion of the commissioners previously expressed, as they must have known, from the testimony developed in the Puget Sound concern, that that part of the claim was a fict.i.tious one, and inst.i.tuted to distract the public and divide the pretensions to so large an amount in two parts. That the commissioners should allow it can only be understood upon the principle that the Hudson's Bay Company were ent.i.tled to that amount as an item of costs in prosecuting their case.

No man at all familiar with the history of this coast, and of the Hudson's Bay Company, can conscientiously approve of that award. Our forefathers, in 1776, said "millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute," which we consider this award to be,--for the benefit of English duplicity and double-dealing, in the false representations they made at the making of the treaty, and the perjury of their witnesses.

CHAPTER XI.

Quotation from Mr. Swan.--His mistake.--General Gibbs'

mistake.--Kamaiyahkan.--Indian agent killed.--I. I. Stevens misjudged.

The gigantic fraud of slavery fell, in our own land, in the short s.p.a.ce of four years; but that of this company--holding and destroying as many lives as the African slave trade--holds its own, and still lifts its head, under the patronage of a professed Christian nation; and claims to be an honorable company, while it robs and starves its unnumbered benighted Indians, and shuts up half of North America from civilization.

At the same time it has obtained $650,000 for partially withdrawing its continued robberies of the American Indians within the United States, after implanting in the savage mind an implacable hatred against the American people.

While we have our own personal knowledge on this point, we will give a quotation from Mr. Swan's work, written in 1852, page 381, showing his views of the subject, which are mostly correct; but, in speaking of the trade of the Americans and of the Hudson's Bay Company, he says: "The Indians preferred to trade with the Americans, for they kept one article in great demand, which the Hudson's Bay people did not sell, and that was whisky."

In this Mr. Swan is entirely mistaken. The Hudson's Bay people always had liquor, and let the Indians have all they could pay for, as proved by their own writer, Mr. Dunn. (See 12th chapter.) Mr. S. continues: "Reckless, worthless men, who are always to be found in new settlements, would give or sell whisky to the Indians, and then, when drunk, abuse them. If the injury was of a serious nature, the Indian was sure to have revenge; and should he kill a white man, would be certainly hanged, if caught; but, although the same law operated on the whites, I have never known an instance where a white man has been hanged for killing an Indian." This has been my experience, Mr. Swan, for more than thirty years, with the Hudson's Bay Company, or English. When a white man kills an Indian, the tribe, or his friends, are satisfied with a present, instead of the life of the murderer. It has been invariably the practice with the Hudson's Bay Company to pay, when any of their people kill an Indian, and to kill the Indian murderer; not so when an American is killed. Says Mr. Swan: "The ill-feelings thus engendered against the Americans, by this, and other causes, was continually _fanned and kept alive by these half-breeds and old servants of the company_, whose feelings were irritated by what they considered an unwarrantable a.s.sumption on the part of these settlers, in coming across the mountains to squat upon lands they considered theirs by right of prior occupancy.

_The officers of the company_ also sympathized with their old servants in this respect, and a _deadly feeling of hatred had existed_ between these officers and the American emigrant, for their course in taking possession of the lands claimed by the Puget Sound Agricultural Company, and other places on the Sound and the Columbia River; and there is not a man among them who would not be glad to have had every American emigrant driven out of the country." It is unnecessary to add examples of this kind to prove to any reasonable mind the continued hostility of that company, and all under its influence, to the American government and people.

Can their friends.h.i.+p be bought by paying them the entire sum they claim?

We think not.

Whatever sum is given will go to enrich the shareholders, who will rejoice over their success, as an Indian would over the scalp of his enemy. The _implacable hatred will remain_, and nothing but extermination, or a complete absorption of the whole continent into the American republic, will close up the difficulty, and save a remnant of the Indian tribes. This, to some, may not be desirable; but humanity and right should, and will, eventually, prevail over crime, or any foreign policy.

The American people are taunted by the Roman Jesuits and English with having driven the Indian from his lands, and having occupied it themselves; but how is it with the English? While the American has attempted to gather the Indians into convenient communities, and spent millions of dollars to civilize and better their condition, the English nation, as such, has never given one dollar, but has chartered company after company of merchants, traders, and explorers, who have entered the Indian country under their exclusive charters, or license to trade, and shut it up from all others. They have, in the profitable prosecution of their trade, so managed as to exterminate all surplus and useless Indians, and reduce them to easy and profitable control. Should one of their half-breed servants, or a white man, attempt to expose their system, or speak of their iniquitous policy, a great hue and cry is raised against him, both in England and America, and he must fall, either by a misinformed public or by savage hands, while they triumphantly refer to the ease with which they exercise absolute control over the Indians in their jurisdiction, as a reason why they should be permitted to continue their exclusive occupation and government of the country. Thus, for being forced partially to leave that portion of Oregon south of the 49th parallel, they presumed to make a claim against our government three times larger than the whole capital stock of the two companies combined.

This hue and cry, and the public sentiment they have continued to raise and control, has its double object. The one is to continue their exclusive possession of, and trade in the country, the other is to obtain all the money they can from the American government for the little part of it they have professedly given up.

It will be remembered that in the investigation of their claims, and the depositions given, it was stated that Forts Okanagon, Colville, Kootanie, and Flathead, were still in their possession in 1866; that Wallawalla, Fort Hall, and Boise were given up because they were prohibited by the government from trading ammunition and guns to the Indians. This means simply that the last-named posts were too far from their own territory to enable them to trade in these prohibited articles, and escape detection by the American authorities. The northern posts, or those contiguous to the 49th parallel, are still occupied by them. From these posts they supply the Indians, and send their emissaries into the American territory, and keep up the "_deadly hatred_," of which Mr. Swan speaks, and about which General Gibbs, in his letter explaining the causes of the Indian war, is so much mistaken.

There is one fact stated by General Gibbs, showing the continued combination of the Roman priests with the Hudson's Bay Company, which we will give in this connection. He says: "The Yankamas have always been opposed to the intrusion of the Americans." This is also a mistake of Mr. Gibbs, as we visited that tribe in the fall of 1839, and found them friendly, and anxious to have an American missionary among them. At that time there had been no priest among them, and no combined effort of the company to get rid of the American missionary settlements. Kamaiyahkan, the very chief mentioned by General Gibbs as being at the head of the combination against the Americans, accompanied us to Dr. Whitman's station, to urge the establishment of an American mission among his people.

General Gibbs says, that, "as early as 1853, Kamaiyahkan had projected a war of extermination. Father Pandosa, the priest at Atahnam (Yankama) mission, in the spring of that year, wrote to Father Mesplie, the one at the Dalls, desiring him to inform Major Alvord, in command at that post, of the fact. Major Alvord reported it to General Hitchc.o.c.k, then in command on this coast, Hitchc.o.c.k _censured_ him as an _alarmist_, and Pandosa was _censured_ by his superiors, who forthwith placed a priest of higher rank over him."

The next year, Indian agent Bolon was killed, and the war commenced. How did General Hitchc.o.c.k learn that Pandosa, a simple-hearted priest, and Major Alvord were alarmists? The fact of the censure, and placing a priest of higher rank over Pandosa at the Yankama station (the very place we selected in 1839 for an American station), is conclusive evidence on this point.

"The war of extermination," that General Gibbs, in his mistaken ideas of Hudson's Bay policy and Indian character, attributes to the policy of Governor I. I. Stevens, was commenced in 1845. At that time, it was supposed by James Douglas, Mr. Ogden, and the ruling spirits of that company, that all they had to do was to withhold munitions of war from the Americans, and the Indians would do the balance for them.

The Indian wars that followed, and that are kept up and encouraged along our borders, and all over this coast, are the legitimate fruits of the "DEADLY HATRED" implanted in the mind and soul of the Indian BY THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY AND THEIR ALLIES, THE PRIESTS. There is an object in this: while they teach the Indians to believe that the Americans are robbing them of their lands and country, they at the same time pretend that they do not want it.

Like Bishop Blanchet with the Cayuses, they "only want a small piece of land to raise a little provisions from," and they are continually bringing such goods as the Indians want; and whenever they are ready to join their forces and send their war-parties into American territory, this company of _honorable English fur traders_ are always ready to supply them with arms and ammunition, and to purchase from them the goods or cattle (including scalps, in case of war between the two nations) they may capture on such expeditions.

The more our government pays to that company, or their fict.i.tious agent, the more means they will have to carry on their opposition to American commerce and enterprise on this coast. Should they obtain but one-third of their outrageous claim, it is contemplated to invest it, with their original stock, in a new company, under the same name, Honorable Hudson's Bay Company, and to extend their operations so as to embrace not only the fur, but gold and grain trade, over this whole western coast.

Will it be for the interests of this country to encourage them? Let their conduct and proceeding while they had the absolute control of it answer, and prove a timely warning to the country before such vampires are allowed to fasten themselves upon it.

CHAPTER XII.

Review of Mr. Greenhow's work in connection with the conduct and policy of the Hudson's Bay Company.--Schools and missionaries.--Reasons for giving extracts from Mr. Greenhow's work.--Present necessity for more knowledge about the company.

As stated by General Gibbs, Mr. Greenhow has given us a complete history of the discovery of Oregon. At the point where he leaves us the reader will observe our present history commences. We did not read Mr.

Greenhow's very elaborate and interesting history till ours had been completed in ma.n.u.script. On reading it, we found abundant proof of statements we have made respecting the policy of the British government to hold, by the influence of her Hudson's Bay Company, the entire country west of the Rocky Mountains that was not fully occupied by the Russian and Spanish governments.

This fact alone makes our history the more important and interesting to the American reader. Mr. Greenhow, upon pages 360 and 361 of his work, closes the labors of the eleven different American fur companies with the name of Captain Nathaniel Wyeth, and upon these two pages introduces the American missionaries, with the Roman Jesuits, though the latter did not arrive in the country till four years after the former.

On his 388th page, after speaking of various transactions relative to California, the Sandwich Islands, and the proceedings in Congress relative to the Oregon country, he says: "In the mean time, the Hudson's Bay Company had been doing all in its power to extend and confirm its position in the countries west of the Rocky Mountains, from which its governors felicitated themselves with the idea that they had expelled the Americans entirely."

Page 389. "The object of the company was, therefore, to place a large number of British subjects in Oregon within the shortest time, and, of course, to exclude from it as much as possible all people of the United States; so that when the period for terminating the convention with the latter power should arrive, Great Britain might be able to present the strongest t.i.tle to the possession of the whole, on the ground of actual occupation by the Hudson's Bay Company. To these ends the efforts of that company had been for some time directed. The immigration of British subjects was encouraged; the Americans were by all means excluded; _and the Indians were brought as much as possible into friends.h.i.+p with, and subject to, the company, while they were taught to regard the people of the United States as enemies!_"

In a work ent.i.tled "Four Years in British Columbia," by Commander R. C.

Mayne, R. N., F. R. G. S., page 279, this British writer says: "I have also spoken of the intense hatred of them all for the Boston men (Americans). This hatred, although nursed chiefly by the cruelty with which they are treated by them, is also owing in a great measure to the system adopted by the Americans of removing them away from their villages when their sites become settled by whites. The Indians often express dread lest we should adopt the same course, and have lately pet.i.tioned Governor Douglas on the subject."

Commander Mayne informs us, on his 193d page, that in the performance of his official duties among the Indians, "recourse to very strong expressions was found necessary; and they were threatened with the undying wrath of Mr. Douglas, whose name always acts as a talisman with them."

We shall have occasion to quote statements from members of the Hudson's Bay Company, and from Jesuit priests, further confirming the truth of Mr. Greenhow's statement as above quoted. It would be gratifying to us to be able, from our long personal experience and observations relative to the policy and conduct of the Hudson's Bay Company, to fully confirm the very plausible, and, if true, honorable treatment of the aborigines of these countries; but truth, candor, observation, our own and other personal knowledge, compel us to believe and know that Mr. Greenhow is entirely mistaken when he says, on his 389th page, speaking of the Hudson's Bay Company:--

"In the treatment of the aborigines of these countries, the Hudson's Bay Company _admirably combined and reconciled humanity with policy_. In the first place, its agents were strictly prohibited from furnis.h.i.+ng them with ardent spirits; and there is reason to believe that the prohibition has been carefully enforced.

"Sunday, March 11, 1852," says Mr. Dunn, one of their own servants, "Indians remained in their huts, perhaps praying, or more likely singing over the _rum_ they had traded with us on Sat.u.r.day.----Tuesday, April 26.--Great many Indians on board.----Traded a number of skins. They seem to like _rum_ very much.----May 4.--They were all _drunk_; went on sh.o.r.e, made a fire about 11 o'clock; being then all drunk began firing on one another.----June 30.--The Indians are bringing their blankets--their skins are all gone; they seem very fond of _rum_.----July 11.--They traded a quant.i.ty of _rum_ from us."

The Kingston _Chronicle_, a newspaper, on the 27th of September, 1848, says: "The Hudson's Bay Company have, in some instances _with their rum_, traded the goods given in presents to the Indians by the Canadian Government, and afterward so traded the same with them at an advance of little short of a thousand per cent."

Question asked by the Parliamentary Committee: "Are intoxicating liquors supplied in any part of the country--and where?" The five witnesses answered:--

1st. "At every place where he was."

2d. "All but the Mandan Indians were desirous to obtain intoxicating liquor; _and the company supply them with it freely_."