Farnham's Travels in the Great Western Prairies, etc., May 21-October 16, 1839, part 1

But this is all. Desert describes it as well as it does the wastes of Arabia. I tarried only two hours with the hospitable Mr. Pambrun. But as if determined that I should remember that I would have been a welcome guest a much longer time, he put some tea and sugar and bread into my packs, and kindly expressed regrets that our mutual admiration of Napoleon should be thus crowded into the chit-chat of hours instead of weeks. A fine companionable fellow; I hope he will command Fort Wallawalla as long as Britons occupy it, and live a hundred years afterwards.

Travelled down the south bank of the Columbia along the water-side; the river half a mile in width, with a deep strong current; water very clear. A short distance from this brink, on both sides, rose the embankments of the chasm it has worn for itself, in the lapse of ages – a noble gorge, worthy of its mighty waters. The northern one might properly be termed a mountain running continuously along the water's edge, seven hundred or eight hundred feet in height, black, shining, and shrubless. The southern one consisted of earthy bluffs, alternating with cliffs from one hundred to four hundred feet above the stream, turreted with basaltic shafts, some twenty, others one hundred feet above the subjacent hills.

Passed a few horses travelling industriously from one wisp of dry bunch grass to another. Every thing unnatural, dry, brown, and desolate. Climbed the heights near sunset, and had an extensive view of the country south of the river. It was a treeless, brown expanse of dearth, vast rolling swells of sand and clay, too dry to bear wormwood. No mountains seen in that direction. On the north they rose precipitously from the river, and hid from view the country beyond. The Wallawalla Indians brought us drift-wood and fresh salmon, for which they desired "shmoke," tobacco.

2nd. Continued to descend the river. Early in the day, basalt disappeared from the bluffs; and the country north and south opened to view five or six miles from the stream. It was partially covered with dry bunch grass; groups of Indian horses occasionally appeared. But I was impressed with the belief that the journeyings from one quid of grass to another, and from these to water, were sufficient to enfeeble the constitution of the best horse in Christendom. The wild wormwood, of "blessed memory," greeted my eyes and nose, wherever its scrags could find sand to nourish them.

During the day I was gratified with the sight of five or six trees, and these a large species of willow, themselves small and bowed with age; stones and rocks more or less fused. A strong westerly wind buffeted me; and much of the time filled the air with drifting sand. We encamped at the water side about three o'clock. I had thus a fine opportunity of ascending the heights to view the southern plain. The slopes were well covered with grass, and seemed easy of ascent; but on trial proved extremely laborious. I however climbed slowly and patiently the long sweeps for two hours, and gained nothing. Nay, I could see the noble river, like a long line of liquid fire blazing with the light of the western sun; and the rush wigwams of the Wallawallas, dotting the sands of the opposite shore; and the barren bluffs and rocks beyond them piled away into space. But to the south my vision was hemmed in by the constantly rising swells. No extensive view could be obtained from any of the heights.

The sun was fast sinking, and the hills rose as I advanced. I was so weary that I could go little further. But taking a careful view of the peaks which would guide me back to my camp, I determined to travel on till it should become too dark to see what might open before me. I climbed slowly and tediously the seemingly endless swells, lifting themselves over and beyond each other in beautiful, but to my wearied limbs, and longing eyes in most vexatious continuity, till the sun dipped his lower rim beneath the horizon.

A volcano burst the hills, thought I; and on I trudged with the little strength that a large quantity of vexation gave me. Fires blister your beautiful brows, I half uttered, as I dragged myself up the crowning eminence, and saw the plateau declining in irregular undulations far into the south-west – a sterile waste, clothed in the glories of the last rays of a splendid sunset. The crests of the distant swells were fringed with bunch grass; not a shrub or a tree on all the field of vision; and evidently no water nearer than the Columbia. Those cattle which are, in the opinions of certain travellers, to depasture these plains in future time, must be of sound wind and limb to gather food and water the same day. I found myself so wearied on attaining this goal of my wishes, that, notwithstanding the lateness of the hour, I was literally compelled to seek some rest before attempting to descend.

I therefore seated myself, and in the luxury of repose permitted darkness to commence creeping over the landscape, before I could rouse myself to the effort of moving. When I did start, my style of locomotion was extremely varied, and withal sometimes not the most pleasant to every portion of the mortal coil. My feet were not unfrequently twice or thrice the length of that measure in advance of my body. But the reader must not suppose that this circumstance diminished my speed. I continued to slide down the hills, using as vehicles the small sharp stones beneath me, until an opportunity offered to put my nether extremities under me again. Once I had nearly plunged headlong from a precipice some fifty feet high, and saved myself by catching a wormwood bush standing within three feet of the brink. Finally, without any serious mishap, I arrived in camp, so completely exhausted, that, without tasting food, I threw myself on my couch for the night.

3rd. The earthy bluffs continued to bind the chasm of the river till mid-day, when buttresses of basalt took their place. A little bunch grass grew among the wild wormwood. Turkeys, grouse, and a species of large hare frequently appeared; many ducks in the stream. For three hours before sunset the trail was rugged and precipitous, often overhanging the river, and so narrow that a mis-step of four inches would have plunged horse and rider hundreds of feet into the boiling flood. But as Skyuse horses never make such disagreeable mistakes, we rode the steeps in safety. Encamped in a small grove of willows. The river along the day's march was hemmed in by lofty and rugged mountains. The rocks showed indubitable evidences of a volcanic origin. As the sun went down, the Wallawalla village on the opposite shore sang a hymn in their own language, to a tune which I have often heard sung in Catholic Churches, before the image of the Virgin. The country in the south, as seen from the heights, was broken and barren; view limited in all directions by the unevenness of the surface.

4th. Awakened this morning by the fall of a hundred tons of rock from the face of the mountain near us. The earth trembled as if the slumbering volcanoes were wrestling in its bowels. We were brought to our feet, and opened and rubbed our eyes with every mark of despatch. My "poor crane" and his hopeful son condescended to appear shocked; an event in an Indian's life that occurs as seldom as his birth. I had stationed myself near the fallen rocks as the sun's first rays awoke the morning hymn of the Indian village.

It was a sweet wild tune that they sung to God among the dark mountains of the Columbia. And sweeter, perhaps, in such a place, where every motion of the heart is a monition that one is alone, and every thought brings with it the remembrance that the social affections are separated from the objects of their fondness, and where every moral sensibility is chilled by a sense of desolation and danger, calling into exercise the resisting and exterminating propensities, and where the holy memories of home find no response but in some loved star in the unchanging heavens. In such a place how far sweeter than anything beside is the evidence of the religious principle – the first teaching of a mother's love, rising over the wastes of nature from the altar of a pure heart – the incense of love going up to the heavenly presence.

At eight o'clock we were en route; at nine o'clock approached the bend in the river, where it changes from a south-west to a north-west course.224 At this place the cliffs which overhang the southern bank presented a fine collection of basaltic columns. Along the margin of the river lay hillocks of scoriæ, piled together in every imaginable form of confusion. Among them grew considerable quantities of bunch grass, on which a band of Wallawalla horses were feeding. Sand-hills on the opposite shore rose one thousand feet in the air. Basalt occurred at intervals, in a more or less perfect state of formation, till the hour of noon, when the trail led to the base of a series of columns extending three-fourths of a mile down the bank. These were more perfectly formed than any previously seen.

They swelled from a large curve of the mountain side, like the bastions of ancient castles; and one series of lofty columns towered above another, till the last was surmounted by a crowning tower, a little above the level of the plain beyond. And their pentagonal form, longitudinal sections, dark shining fracture, and immense masses strewn along my way, betokened me if not in the very presence of the Giant's Causeway, yet on a spot where the same mighty energies had exerted themselves which built that rare, beautiful wonder of the Emerald Isle. The river was very tortuous, and shut in by high dykes of basalt and sand hills the remainder of the day; saw three small rapids in the Columbia; encamped at sunset; too weary to climb the heights.

5th. Arose at break of day, and ordering my guide to make arrangements for starting as soon as I should return, I ascended the neighbouring heights. Grassy undulating plains in all directions south of the river. Far in the north-east towered the frozen peak of Mount Washington, a perfect pyramid, clothed with eternal snows.225 The view in the north was hemmed in by mountains which rose higher than the place of observation. On descending, my guide Crickie complained of ill-health; and assigned that circumstance as a reason why he should not proceed with me to the Dalles. I was much vexed with him at the time, for his unseasonable desertion, and believed that the real inducement to his course was the danger to be apprehended from the Indians at the Shutes. But I was sorry to learn from Dr. Whitman afterwards that the poor fellow was actually sick, and that he suffered much at the sand bank encampment, where I left him. After paying Crickie for his faithful services thus far along, and giving him four days' provision for himself and boy, a Wallawalla Indian who had encamped with us the previous night, took charge of Crickie's horses, bearing myself and packs, and led the way down the river.

The "poor crane" was an honest, honourable man; and I can never think of all his kind acts to me, from the time I met him in the plains beyond the Wallawalla mission, till I left him sick on the bank of the Columbia, without wishing an opportunity to testify my sense of his moral worth and goodness of heart in some way which shall yield him a substantial reward for all he suffered in my service. Two hours' ride brought to my ears the music of the "tum tum orter;" the Indian-English for the "thundering waters" of the Shutes.226 These are the only perpendicular falls of the Columbia, in its course from the junction of its great northern and southern branches, to the ocean. And they do indeed thunder. A stratum of black rock forming the bed of the river above, by preserving its horizontal position, rises at this place above the natural surface of the stream, and forms an abrupt precipice, hanging sixty feet in height over the bed below.

The river, when I passed was unfortunately at its lower stage – still the Shutes were terribly grand. The main body of the water swept around near its southern bank, and being there compressed into, a narrow rough channel, chafed its angry way to the brink, where, bending a massive curve, as if hesitating to risk the leap, it plunged into a narrow cavern sixty feet deep, with a force and volume which made the earth tremble. The noise was prodigious, deafening, and echoed in awful tumult among the barren mountains. Further towards the other shore, smaller jets were rushing from the imprisoned rocks which clustered near the brow of the cliff, into other caverns; and close under the north bank, and farther down the stream, thundered another, nearly equal in grandeur to the one first described.

On the portions of the rocky stratum left by the chafing waters, in wearing out numerous channels below the present situation of the Shutes, were the flag huts of one hundred Wallawalla fishermen. They were taking salmon with scoop nets and bone pointed spears. These people are filthy and naked. Some sat by fires swallowing roasted salmon; others greasing themselves with the oil of that fish; others were dressing and drying them; others stood down on the projections in the chasms, sweeping their nets in the foaming waters; untaught, un-elevated, least intelligent, least improvable human nature! It was not deemed safe to remain long among these savages, who had begun to examine my packs with more interest than strictly honest intentions towards them seemed to require, and I took to the trail again on a fast trot.

Some of them endeavoured to follow on foot, demanding a tribute of "smoke" for the privilege of passing their dominions. But having none at hand I pushed on, without regarding their suit, over sand hills, beds of volcanic stones, and hanging declivities, till rounding a basaltic buttress, I came in view of the little plain on the south western shore of the Dalles. The "Dalles," a French term for "flat stones," is applied to a portion of the river here, where, by a process similar to that going on at Niagara, the waters have cut channels through an immense stratum of black rock, over which they used to fall as at the Shutes.227

At low stages these are of sufficient capacity to pass all the waters. But the annual floods overflow the "flat stones," and produce a lashing and leaping, and whirling of waters, too grand for the imagination to conceive. These "Dalles" are covered with the huts of the Chinooks, a small band of a tribe of the same name, which inhabits the banks of Columbia from this place to its mouth.228 They flatten their heads and perforate the septum of the nose, as do the Wallawallas, Skyuse and Nez Percés.

The depression of the southern embankment of the chasm of the river at the Dalles, extends eight miles along the stream, and from a half mile to a mile in width. It is broken by ledges bursting through the surface, and in parts loaded with immense boulders of detached rocks. Along the north-western border are groves of small white oaks; and on the highlands in that direction are forests of pine, spruce and other evergreens, clothing the whole country westward to the snowy peaks of the President's Range.

In the south-west, specked with clusters of bunch grass, is an open rolling plain, which stretches beyond the reach of vision. In the north rise sharp mountains, thinly clad with evergreen trees; through an opening among the peaks of which, appeared the shining apex of Mount Adams.229 In the north-east sweep away in brown barrenness, naked cliffs and sandy wastes. I had taken a bird's-eye view of the Dalles and the region round about, when my Indian cried out "Lee house." And there it was, a mission house of the American P. E. Methodist Church, in charge of Messrs. Lee and Perkins.230

I spent a week at the Dalles' mission, eating salmon and growing fat; an event that had not lately occurred in the republic of the members of my mortal confederacy.

The buildings of the mission, are a dwelling-house, a house for worship and for school purposes, and a workshop, &c. The first is a log structure thirty by twenty feet, one and a half floor high, shingle roofs, and floors made of plank cut with a whip-saw from the pines of the hills. The lower story is divided into two rooms – the one a dining-room, the other the family apartment of Mr. Perkins and lady. These are lined overhead and at the sides with beautiful rush mats manufactured by the Indians. The upper story is partitioned into six dormitories, and a school-room for Indian children; all neatly lined with mats. Underneath is an excellent cellar. The building designed for a house of worship, was being built when I arrived. Its architecture is a curiosity.

The frame is made in the usual form, save that instead of four main posts at the corners, and others at considerable distances, for the support of lateral girders, there were eleven on each side, and six on each end, beside the corner posts – all equal in size and length. Between these billets of wood were driven transversely, on which as lathing, mortar made of clay, sand and straw, were laid to a level with their exterior and interior faces. There is so little falling weather here, that this mode of building was considered sufficiently substantial.

Messrs. Lee and Perkins were formerly connected with the mission on the Willamette. Eighteen months before I had the happiness of enjoying their hospitality, they came to this spot with axes on their shoulders, felled trees, ploughed, fenced, and planted twenty acres of land with their own hands, and erected these habitations of civilization and Christianity on the bosom of the howling wilderness. Their premises are situated on elevated ground, about a mile south-west from the river. Immediately back is a grove of small white oaks and yellow pines; a little north, is a sweet spring bursting from a ledge of rocks which supplies water for house use, and moistens about an acre of rich soil. About a mile to the south, are two or three hundred acres of fine land, with groves of oaks around, and an abundant supply of excellent water. Here it was the intention of the mission to open a farm under the care of a layman from the States.

A mile and a half to the north, is a tract of about two hundred acres, susceptible of being plentifully irrigated by a number of large streams that pour down upon it from the western mountains. Here, too, they intended to locate laymen to open farms, and extract from the idle earth the means of feeding themselves, the Indians, and the wayworn white man from the burnt solitudes of the mountains. No location, not even the sacred precincts of St. Bernard, on the snows of the Alps, could be better chosen for the operations of a holy benevolence.

The Indians from many quarters flock to the Dalles and the Shutes in the spring, and autumn, and winter to purchase salmon; the commercial movements between the States and the Pacific will pass their door; and there in after-days, the sturdy emigrants from the States will stop, (as did the pilgrims on Plymouth rock,) to give grateful praise to Him who stood forth in their aid, not indeed while struggling on the foamy billow, but on the burning plain and the icy cliff, and in the deadly turmoil of Indian battles on the way, and will seek food and rest for their emaciated frames, before entering the woody glen and flowing everglades of Lower Oregon.

A saw-mill, a grist-mill, and other machinery necessary to carry out a liberal plan of operations, are in contemplation. The fruit of the oak, it is supposed, will support 1,000 hogs from the middle of August to the middle of April; the products of the arable soil will suffice to make that number into marketable pork; and as the grass and other vegetation grow there during the winter months, twenty-five or thirty square miles of pasturage round about, will enable them to raise, at a trifling expense, immense numbers of sheep, horses and cattle. Five acres of ground cultivated in 1839, produced twenty-five bushels of the small grains, seventy-five bushels of potatoes, and considerable quantities of other vegetables. This was an experiment only on soil not irrigated. Gentlemen suppose it capable of producing double that amount, if irrigated. The season, too, was unusually dry.

Around about the mission are clusters of friable sand-stone rocks of remarkable form. Their height varies from ten to thirty feet; their basilar diameters from three to ten feet: their shape generally resembles that of the obelisk. These (fifteen or twenty in number) standing among the oaks and pines, often in clusters, and sometimes solitary, give a strange interest of antiquity to the spot. And this illusion is increased by a rock of another form, an immense boulder resting upon a short, slender pedestal, and strikingly resembling the Egyptian sphynx. The Indian tradition in regard to them is, that they were formerly men, who, for some sin against the Great Spirit, were changed to stone.

At the Dalles is the upper village of the Chinooks. At the Shutes, five miles above, is the lower village of the Wallawallas. One of the missionaries, Mr. Lee, learns the Chinook language, and the other, Mr. Perkins, the Wallawalla; and their custom is to repair on Sabbath days each to his own people, and teach them the Christian religion. The Chinooks flatten their heads more, and are more stupid than any other tribe on the Columbia. There was one among the Dalles' band, who, it was said, resisted so obstinately the kind efforts of his parents to crush his skull into the aristocratic shape, that they abandoned him to the care of nature in this regard; and much to the scandal of his family, his head grew in the natural form. I saw him every day while I staid there. He was evidently the most intelligent one of the band. His name is Boston; so called, because the form of his head resembles that of Americans, whom the Indians call "Boston," in order to distinguish them from "King George's men," – the Hudson Bay Company gentlemen. Boston, although of mean origin, has, on account of his superior energy and intelligence, become the war chief of the Dalles.

On the morning of the 14th, I overhauled my baggage, preparatory to descending the river. In doing so, I was much vexed to find that the Indians had, in some manner, drawn my saddle to the window of the workshop in which it was deposited, and stripped it of stirrups, stirrup-straps, surcingle, girths, and crupper. They had also stolen my bridle.

The loss of these articles, in a region where they could not be purchased – articles so necessary to me in carrying out my designs of travelling over the lower country, roused in me the bitterest determination to regain them at all hazards. Without reflecting for a moment upon the disparity of numbers between my single self and forty or fifty able-bodied Indians, I armed myself completely, and marched my solitary battalion to the camp of the principal chief, and entered it. He was away. I explained to some persons there by signs and a few words, the object of my search, and marched my army to an elevated position and halted.

I had been stationed but a short time, when the Indians began to collect in their chief's lodge, and whisper earnestly. Ten minutes passed thus, and Indians were constantly arriving and entering. I was supported in the rear by a lusty oak, and so far as I remember, was ready to exclaim with the renowned antagonist of Roderick Dhu,

"Come one, come all;" &c

but never having been a hero before or since, I am not quite certain that I thought any such thing. My wrath, however, was extreme. To be robbed for the first time by Indians, and that by such cowardly wretches as these Chinooks were; and robbed too of my means of exploring Oregon, when on the very threshold of the most charming part of it, was an inconvenience and an ignominy worth a battle to remove.

Just at the moment of this lofty conclusion, thirty-eight or forty Indians rushed around me; eight or ten loaded muskets were levelled at my chest, within ten feet of me, and the old chief stood within five feet, with a duelling pistol loaded, cocked, and pointed at my heart. While this movement was being made, I brought my rifle to bear upon the old chief's vital organs. Thus both armies stood for the space of five minutes, without the movement of tongue or muscle. Then one of the braves intimated that it was "not good" for me to be out with arms; and that I must immediately accommodate myself within doors. But to this proposition the bravery of my army would not submit. I accordingly informed him to that effect; whereupon the opposing army went into a furious rage.

At this juncture of affairs, Mr. Lee came up, and acted as interpreter. He inquired into the difficulty, and was told that the "whole Chinook tribe was threatened with invasion, and all the horrors of a general war, on what account they knew not." The commander of my army reported that they had robbed him, and deserved such treatment; and that he had taken arms to annihilate the tribe, unless they had restored to him what they had stolen.