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

I was then told that "it was not good for me to appear in arms – that it was good for me to go into the house." To this, my army with one voice replied, "Nay, never, never leave the ground, or the Chinooks alive, tribe or chief, if the stolen property be not restored;" and wheeling my battalion, drove first one flank and then the other of the opposing hosts, fifty yards into the depths of the forests.

During this movement, worthy of the best days of Spartan valour, the old chief stood amazed to see his followers, with guns loaded and cocked, fly before such inferior numbers. After effecting the complete rout of the opposing infantry, the army under my command took up the old position without the loss of a single man. But the old chief was still there, as dogged and sullen as Indian ever was. On approaching him, he presented his pistol again near my chest, whereupon my rifle was instantly in a position to reach his; and thus the renowned leaders of these mighty hosts stood for the space of an hour without bloodshed.

Perhaps such another chief was never seen; such unblenching coolness – excepting always the heat which was thrown off in a healthful and profuse perspiration – and such perfect undauntedness, except an unpleasant knocking of the knees together, produced probably by the anticipated blasts of December. But while these exhibitions of valour were being enacted, one stirrup was thrown at my feet, and then the other, and then the straps, the crupper, &c., until all the most valuable articles lost, were piled before me. The conquest was complete, and will doubtless shed immortal lustre upon the gallant band, who, in the heart of the wilderness, dared to assert and maintain, against the encroachments of a numerous and well-disciplined foe, the "élite" of the Chinook army, the rights and high prerogative of brave freemen and soldiers. The number of killed and wounded of the enemy had not been ascertained, when the troops under my command departed for the lower country.

In the evening which succeeded this day of carnage, the old chief assembled his surviving followers, and made war speeches until midnight. His wrath was immeasurable. On the following morning, the Indians in the employ of the mission left their work.

About ten o'clock, one of the tribe appeared with a pack-horse, to convey Mr. Lee's and my own packs to the water-side. The old chief also appeared, and bade him desist. He stood armed before the house an hour, making many threats against the Bostons, individually and collectively; but finally retired. As soon as he had entered his lodge, the horse of his disobedient subject was loaded, and rushed to the river. An effort was made to get oarsmen for our canoe, but the old hero of a legion of devils told them, "the high Bostons would kill them all, and that they must not go with him." Mr. Lee, however, did not despair.

We followed the baggage towards the river. When within a quarter of a mile of it, two Americans, members of Richardson's party, Mr. Lee and an Indian or two, whom the old chief had not succeeded in frightening took the canoe from the bushes, and bore it to the river on their shoulders.

The natives were stationed beyond rifle-shot upon the rocks on either side of the way, bows and arrows, and guns in hand. Indian Boston was in command. He stood on the loftiest rock, grinding his teeth, and growling like a bloodhound, "Bostons ugh;" and springing upon his bow, drove his arrows into the ground with demoniac madness. I stopped, and drew my rifle to my face, whereupon there was a grand retreat behind the rocks. My army marched slowly and majestically on, as became the dignity of veteran victors. The women and children fled from the wigwams by the way; and the fear of the annihilation of the whole tribe only abated when my wrath was, to their understanding, appeased by the interference of Mr. Lee. Thus the tribe was saved from my vengeance – the whole number, fifty or sixty stout savages, were saved! an instance of clemency, a parallel to which will scarcely be found in the history of past ages.

Being convinced, at last, that my intentions towards them had become more pacific, six oarsmen, a bowsman, and steersman, were readily engaged by Mr. Lee, and he shoved off from that memorable battle-ground on a voyage to the Willamette. These Indians have been notorious thieves ever since they have been known to the whites. Their meanness has been equally well known. Destitute of every manly and moral virtue, they and their fathers have hung around the Dalles, eaten salmon, and rotted in idleness and vice; active only in mischief, and honest only in their crouching cowardice towards those they suppose able to punish their villany.231

There is some very curious philosophy among them: as for example, they believe human existence to be indestructible by the laws of nature; and never diseased, unless made so by the Medicine men or conjurers, who are believed to enter into the system in an unseen manner, and pull at the vitals. They also hold that one Medicine man can cast out another. Accordingly, when one of them is called to a patient and does not succeed in restoring him to health, he is believed to be accessory to his death, and is punished as such by the relatives of the deceased.

Their mode of treating patients is to thrust them into a sweat oven, and thence, reeking with perspiration, into the cold streams. After this, they are stretched out at length on the ground, wrapped very warmly, and kneaded, and rolled, and rubbed, with great severity. The abdomen is violently pressed down to the spine, and the forehead pressed with the might of the operator; the arms and limbs, pinched and rubbed, rolled and bruised. Meanwhile, the conjuror is uttering most beastly noises. As might be supposed, patients labouring under the febrile diseases, are soon destroyed.

In order, however, to keep up their influence among the people, the conjurors of a tribe, male and female, have cabalistic dances. After the darkness of night sets in, they gather together in a wigwam, build a large fire in the centre, spread the floor with elk skins, set up on end a wide cedar board, and suspend near it a stick of wood in a horizontal position. An individual seizes the end of the stick, swings the other end against the cedar board, and thus beats noisy time to a still more noisy chant. The dance is commenced sometimes by a man alone, and often by a man and woman. And various and strange are the bodily contortions of the performers. They jump up and down, and swing their arms with more and more violence, as the noise of the singing and thumping accompaniment increases, and yelp, and froth at the mouth, till the musician winds up with the word "ugh" – a long, strong, gutteral grunt; or until some one of the dancers falls apparently dead.

When the latter is the case, one of the number walks around the prostrate individual, and calls his or her name loudly at each ear, at the nose, fingers, and toes. After this ceremony, the supposed dead shudders greatly, and comes to life. And thus they continue to sing, and thump, and dance, and die, and come to life through the night. They are said to be very expert at sleight of hand.

The Chinooks, like all other Indians, believe in existence after death; but their views of the conditions of that existence, I could not learn. The conjurors teach them, that they themselves shall be able to visit their tribe after the body shall have decayed; and when approaching the end of their days, inform the people in what shape they will manifest themselves. Some choose a horse, others a deer, others an elk, &c., and when they die, the image of their transmigrated state is erected over their remains.232

The reader is desired to consider Mr. Lee and myself gliding, arrow-like, down the deep clear Columbia, at two o'clock in the afternoon of the 15th, and to interest himself in the bold mountain embankments clothed with the deep, living green of lofty pine and fir forests, while I revert to the kind hospitalities of the Dalles' mission. Yet how entirely impossible is it to relate all that one enjoys in every muscle of the body, every nerve and sense, and every affection of the spirit when he flies from the hardships and loneliness of deserts to the comforts of a bed, a chair, and a table, and the holy sympathy of hearts moulded and controlled by the higher sentiments. I had taken leave of Mr. and Mrs. Perkins with the feelings that one experiences in civilized lands, when leaving long-tried and congenial friends.

The good man urged me to return and explore with him, during the rainy season in the lower country, some extensive and beautiful prairies, which the Indians say lie sixty or seventy miles in the north, on the east side of the President's range; and Mrs. Perkins kindly proposed to welcome my return for that object with a splendid suit of buckskin, to be used in my journeyings.

But I must leave my friends to introduce the reader to the "Island of the Tombs."233 Mr. Lee pointed to it, as the tops of the cedar board houses of the dead peered over the hillocks of sand and rock among which they stood. We moored our canoe on the western side, and climbed up a precipice of black shining rocks two hundred feet; and winding among drifts of sand the distance of one hundred yards came to the tombs. They consisted of boxes ten or twelve feet square on the ground, eight or ten high, made of cedar boards fastened to a rough frame, in an upright position at the sides, and horizontally over the top. On them, and about them, were the cooking utensils, and other personal property of the deceased. Within were the dead bodies, wrapped in many thicknesses of deer and elk skins, tightly lashed with leather thongs, and laid in a pile with their heads to the east. Underneath the undecayed bodies were many bones from which the flesh and wrappings had fallen: in some instances a number of waggon loads. Three or four of the tombs had gone to ruins, and the skulls and other bones lay strewn on the ground. The skulls were all flattened. I picked up one with the intention of bringing it to the States. But as Mr. Lee assured me that the high veneration of the living for the dead would make the attempt very dangerous, I reluctantly returned it to its resting place.234

We glided merrily down the river till sunset, and landed on the northern shore to sup. The river had varied from one to one and a half miles in width, with rather a sluggish current; water clear, cool, and very deep. Various kinds of duck, divers, &c., were upon its beautiful surface. The hair seal was abundant.235 The mountains rose abruptly on either side from five hundred to two thousand feet, in sweeping heights, clad with evergreen trees. Some few small oaks grew in the nooks by the water side. Among these were Indian wigwams, constructed of boards split from the red cedar on the mountains. I entered some of them. They were filthy in the extreme. In one of them was a sick man. A withered old female was kneading and pinching the devil out of him. He was labouring under a bilious fever. But as a "Medicine man" was pulling at his gall, it was necessary to expel him; and the old hag pressed his head, bruised his abdomen, &c., with the fury and groaning of a bedlamite.

Not an acre of arable land appeared along the shores. The Indians subsist on fish and acorns of the white oak. The former they eat fresh during the summer; but their winter stores they dry and preserve in the following manner: – The spine of the fish being taken out, and the flesh being slashed into checks with a knife, so as to expose as much surface as possible, is laid on the rocks to dry. After becoming thoroughly hard, it is bruised to powder, mixed with the oil of the leaf fat of the fish, and packed away in flag sacks. Although no salt is used in this preparation, it remains good till May of the following year. The acorns, as soon as they fall from the trees, are buried in sand constantly saturated with water, where they remain till spring. By this soaking their bitter flavour is said to be destroyed.

After supper, Mr. Lee ordered a launch, and the Indian paddles were again dipping in the bright waters. The stars were out on the clear night, twinkling as of old, when the lofty peaks around were heaved from the depths of the volcano. They now looked down on a less grand, indeed, but more lovely scene. The fires of the natives blazed among the woody glens, the light canoe skimmed the water near the shore, the winds groaned over the mountain tops, the cascades sang from cliff to cliff, the loon shouted and dove beneath the shining wave; it was a wild, almost unearthly scene, in the deep gorge of the Columbia. The rising of the moon changed its features. The profoundest silence reigned, save the dash of paddles that echoed faintly from the shores; our canoe sprang lightly over the rippling waters, the Indian fires smouldered among the waving pines; the stars became dim, and the depths of the blue sky glowed one vast nebula of mellow light. But the eastern mountains hid awhile the orb from sight.

The south-western heights shone with its pale beams, and cast into the deeply sunken river a bewitching dancing of light and shade, unequalled by the pencil of the wildest imagination. The grandeur, too, of grove, and cliff, and mountain, and the mighty Columbia wrapped in the drapery of a golden midnight! It was the new and rapidly opening panorama of the sublime wilderness. The scene changed again when the moon was high in heaven.

The cocks crew in the Indian villages; the birds twittered on the boughs; the wild fowl screamed, as her light gilded the chasm of the river, and revealed the high rock Islands with their rugged crags and mouldering tombs. The winds from Mount Adams were loaded with frosts, and the poetry of the night was fast waning into an ague, when Mr. Lee ordered the steersman to moor. A crackling pine fire was soon blazing, and having warmed our shivering frames, we spread our blankets, and slept sweetly till the dawn.

Early on the morning of the 16th, our Indians were pulling at the paddles. The sky was overcast, and a dash of rain occasionally fell, the first I had witnessed since leaving Boyou Salade.236 And although the air was chilly, and the heavens gloomy, yet when the large clear drops pattered on my hat, and fell in glad confusion around our little bark, a thrill of pleasure shot through my heart. Dangers, wastes, thirst, starvation, eternal dearth on the earth, and dewless heavens, were matters only of painful recollection. The present was the reality of the past engrafted on the hopes of the future; the showery skies, the lofty green mountains, the tumbling cataracts, the mighty forests, the sweet savour of teeming groves, among the like of which I had breathed in infancy, hung over the threshold of the lower Columbia, the goal of my wayfaring.

Hearken to that roar of waters! see the hastening of the flood! hear the sharp rippling by yonder rock; the whole river sinks from view in advance of us. The bowsman dips his paddle deeply and quickly; the frail canoe shoots to the northern shore between a string of islands and the main land; glides quickly down a narrow channel; passes a village of cedar board wigwams on a beautiful little plain to the right; it rounds the lower island; behold the Cascades! – an immense trough of boulders of rocks, down which rushes the "Great River of the West." The baggage is ashore; the Indians are conveying the canoe over the portage, and while this is being done, the reader will have time to explore the lower falls of the Columbia, and their vicinage.237

The trail of the Portage runs near the torrent, along the rocky slope on its northern bank, and terminates among large loose rocks, blanched by the floods of ages, at the foot of the trough of the main rapid. It is about a mile and a half long. At its lower end voyagers reembark when the river is at a low stage, and run the lower rapids. But when it is swollen by the annual freshets, they bear their boats a mile and a half farther down, where the water is deep and less tumultuous. In walking down this path, I had a near view of the whole length of the main rapids. As I have intimated, the bed of the river here is a vast inclined trough of white rocks, sixty or eighty feet deep, about four hundred yards wide at the top, and diminishing to about half that width at the bottom. The length of this trough is about a mile. In that distance the water falls about one hundred and thirty feet; in the rapids, above and below it, about twenty feet, making the whole descent about one hundred and fifty feet. The quantity of water which passes here is incalculable. But an approximate idea of it may be obtained from the fact that while the velocity is so great, that the eye with difficulty follows objects floating on the surface, yet such is its volume at the lowest stage of the river, that it rises and bends like a sea of molten glass over a channel of immense rocks, without breaking its surface, except near the shores, so deep and vast is the mighty flood!

In the June freshets, when the melted snows from the western declivities of seven hundred miles of the Rocky Mountains, and those on the eastern sides of the President's Range, come down, the Cascades must present a spectacle of sublimity equalled only by Niagara. This is the passage of the river through the President's Range, and the mountains near it on either side are worthy of their distinguished name. At a short distance from the southern shore they rise in long ridgy slopes, covered with pines, and other terebinthine trees of extraordinary size,238 over the tops of which rise bold black crags, which, elevating themselves in great grandeur one beyond another, twenty or thirty miles to the southward, cluster around the icy base of Mount Washington. On the other side of the Cascades is a similar scene. Immense and gloomy forests, tangled with fallen timber and impenetrable underbrush, cover mountains, which in the States, would excite the profoundest admiration for their majesty and beauty, but which dwindle into insignificance as they are viewed in presence of the shining glaciers, and massive grandeur of Mount Adams, hanging over them.

The river above the Cascades runs north-westwardly; but approaching the descent, it turns westward, and, after entering the trough, south-westwardly, and having passed this, it resumes its course to the north west. By this bend, it leaves between its shore and the northern mountains, a somewhat broken plain, a mile in width, and about four miles in length. At the upper end of the rapids, this plain is nearly on a level with the river, so that an inconsiderable freshet sets the water up a natural channel half way across the bend. This circumstance, and the absence of any serious obstruction in the form of hills, &c., led me to suppose that a canal might be cut around the Cascades at a trifling expence, which would not only open steamboat navigation to the Dalles, but furnish at this interesting spot, an incalculable amount of water power.239

The canoe had been deposited among the rocks at the lower end of the trough, our cocoa and boiled salmon, bread, butter, potatoes, &c., had been located in their proper depositories, and we were taking a parting gaze at the rushing flood, when the sound of footsteps, and an order given in French to deposit a bale of goods at the water side, drew our attention to a hearty old gentleman of fifty or fifty-five, whom Mr. Lee immediately recognized as Dr. McLaughlin.240 He was about five feet eleven inches in height, and stoutly built, weighing about two hundred pounds, with large green blueish eyes, a ruddy complexion, and hair of snowy whiteness. He was on his return from London with dispatches from the Hudson's Bay Company's Board in England, and with letters from friends at home to the hundreds of Britons in its employ in the north-western wilderness. He was in high spirits. Every crag in sight was familiar to him, had witnessed the energy and zeal of thirty years' successful enterprise; had seen him in the strength of ripened manhood, and now beheld his undiminished energies crowned with the frosted locks of age. We spent ten minutes with the doctor, and received a kind invitation to the hospitalities of his post; gave our canoe, freighted with our baggage, in charge of the Indians, to take down the lower rapids, and ascended the bluff to the trail which leads to the tide-water below them. We climbed two hundred feet among small spruce, pine, fir, and hemlock trees, to the table land.

The track was strewn with fragments of petrified trees, from three inches to two feet in diameter, and rocks, (quartz and granite, ex loco), mingled with others more or less fused. Soon after striking the path on the plain, we came to a beautiful little lake, lying near the brink of the hill. It was clear and deep; and around its western, northern, and eastern shores, drooped the boughs of a thick hedge of small evergreen trees, which dipped and rose charmingly in its waters. All around stood the lofty pines, sighing and groaning in the wind. Nothing could be seen, but the little lake and the girding forest; a gem of perfect beauty, reflecting the deep shades of the unbroken wilderness. A little stream creeping away from it down the bluff, babbled back the roar of the Cascades.241

The trail led us among deep ravines, clad with heavy frosts, the soil of which was a coarse gravel, thinly covered with a vegetable mould. A mile from the lake, we came upon a plain level again. In this place was a collection of Indian tombs, similar to those upon the "Island of tombs." These were six or eight in number, and contained a great quantity of bones. On the boards around the sides were painted the figures of death, horses, dogs, &c. The great destroyer bears the same grim aspect to the savage mind that he does to ours. – A skull and the fleshless bones of a skeleton piled around, were his symbol upon these rude resting places of the departed.242 One of them, which our Indian said, contained the remains of a celebrated "Medicine man," bore the figure of a horse rudely carved from the red cedar tree. This was the form in which his posthumous visits were to be made to his tribe. Small brass kettles, wooden pails, and baskets of curious workmanship, were piled on the roof.

Thence onward half a mile over a stony soil, sometimes open, and again covered with forests, we reached our canoe by the rocky shore at the foot of the rapids. Mr. Lee here pointed out to me a strong eddying current on the southern shore, in which Mr. Cyrus Shepard and Mrs. Doctor White and child, of the Methodist Mission on the Willamette, were capsized the year before, in an attempt to run the lower rapids.243 Mr. Shepard could not swim – had sunk the second time, and rose by the side of the upturned canoe, when he seized the hand of Mrs. White, who was on the opposite side, and thus sustained himself and her, until some Indians came to their relief. On reaching the shore, and turning up the canoe, the child was found entangled among the cross-bars, dead!

The current was strong where we re-entered our canoe, and bore us along at a brisk rate. – The weather, too, was very agreeable; the sky transparent, and glowing with a mild October sun. The scenery about us was truly grand. A few detached wisps of mist clung to the dark crags of the mountains on the southern shore, and numerous cascades shot out from the peaks, and tumbling from one shelf to another, at length plunged hundreds of feet among confused heaps of rocks in the vale. The crags themselves were extremely picturesque; they beetled out so boldly, a thousand feet above the forests on the sides of the mountain, and appeared to hang so easily and gracefully on the air. Some of them were basaltic. One appeared very remarkable. The mountain on which it stood was about one thousand two hundred feet high. On its side there was a deep rocky ravine. In this, about three hundred feet from the plain, arose a column of thirty or forty feet in diameter, and, I judged more than two hundred feet high, surmounted by a cap resembling the pediment of an ancient church.

Far up its sides grew a number of shrub cedars, which had taken root in the crevices, and, as they grew, sunk down horizontally, forming an irregular fringe of green around it. A short distance further down was seen a beautiful cascade. The stream appeared to rise near the very apex of the mountain, and having run a number of rods in a dark gorge between two peaks, it suddenly shot from the brink of a cliff into the copse of evergreen trees at the base of the mountain. The height of the perpendicular fall appeared to be about six hundred feet. Some of the water was dispersed in spray before reaching the ground; but a large quantity of it fell on the plain, and sent among the heights a noisy and thrilling echo.244 On the north side of the river, the mountains were less precipitous, and covered with a dense forest of pines, cedars, firs, &c.