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 |  | Tuesday February 9, 2010 6:10 PM |
 | | CHILDREN of the SUN by David Wynecoop | |
CHILDREN of the SUN: Chapter 2
Fur Traders and Missionaries
In 1807 the first known white man entered the Spokane country .
This was David Thompson, an employee of the Canadian owned
Northwest Fur Trading Company, who led a party into the area
to establish trading posts and trapping networks. Having first
crossed the Rockies in 1807, Thompson reached the headwaters of
the Columbia and in the following spring traded along the
Kootenai River in what is now northwestern Montana. In 1809 he
again crossed the mountains and built Kullyspell House on the
east shore of Lake Pend d'Orielle. From there he moved to the
southeast up the Clark's Fork and in November built the first
Salish House near the present site of Thompson Falls, Montana.
In the following spring he returned to the Spokane region and
visited Spokane House, which had been established in his absence
by one of his subordinates, either Finan McDonald or Jacques
Raphal Finlay. The latter, commonly known as Jaco Finlay, was a
part-Indian hunter whom Thompson had employed in 1810.
Located near the confluence of the Little Spokane and Spokane
Rivers, Spokane House soon became the hub of a far-flung
trapping empire embracing the entire Columbia Plateau. Its
attractions for the lonely fur traders, and Indians too, are
quite understandable when one reads contemporary descriptions of
it. Alexander Ross provides a lively account:
"Spokane House was a retired spot, no hostile natives were there
to disquiet a man. Here the Bourgeois (Trader Chief) who
presided over the Company's affairs resided, and that made
Spokane House the center of attraction. There all the wintering
parties with the exception of the northern district met. There
they were all filled out. It was the great starting point,
although six weeks travel out of the direct line of some, and
more or less inconvenient to all! But that was nothing. These
trifles never troubled the great man."
At Spokane House, too, there were handsome buildings. There was
a ball room, and no females in the land so fair to look upon as
the nymphs of Spokane. No damsel could dance so gracefully as
they; none were so attractive. But Spokane House was not
celebrated for fine women only, there were fine horses also.
The race ground was admired, and the pleasures of the race.
Altogether, Spokane House was a delightful place and time had
confirmed its celebrity.
While Spokane House basked in its fame and enjoyed the pleas
ures of the ball room and the race track, a rival firm soon
entered the area to compete with it. This was John Jacob Astor's
American firm called the Pacific' Fur Company. One of Astor's
traders, a former Northwesterner called John Clarke, established
him self at the comer of the opposition post, then went about
winning the Spokane's to his own cause. The Indians were
assembled, long speeches were made, and mighty things were
promised on both sides. As soon as Clarke had got himself
settled, he organized outposts, the most notable being one on
Coeur d' Alene Lake where the Spokane River had its origin. For
a time it appeared that the new rival would take over the area's
trade. However, one year after its construction, because of the
war between the United States and Great Britain, the American
trading posts were sold out to the Canadian firm.
The trading posts introduced many new products to the Indians,
the most important being guns and ammunition. The Indians
acquired these goods by exchanging pelts. Usually the exchange
was twenty pelts for one gun. A gun on the European market sold
for one and one half pounds, though twenty pelts brought about
twenty-five pounds sterling. It is easily seen that the traders
made a tremendous profit. Tobacco was a very important trade
item and was popular with the Indian trappers.
The Indian way of life changed considerably with the arrival of
the traders. Wool blankets replaced animal robes; guns re placed
the bow and arrow; iron pots and pans replaced the coiled
baskets for cooking; and grain crops were grown in the fields.
The fur companies had a much better relationship with the
natives than did the United States government for several rea
song. The, main reason was that most of the fur company
employees were half-breed eastern Indians who married Spokane
women. This made the employer-employee relationship practically
a family affair. Also, the Indians became dependent upon some of
the modern conveniences which only the traders possessed.
During one season more than 9,000 beaver pelts were traded in
the Spokane district which included the Snake River, Kootenai
River, and Flathead River. Thompson is said to have taken
$50,000 worth of pelts with him when he returned to Canada.
In 1821, the Northwest Fur Company was forced to merge with its
rival, the Hudson's Bay Company. Nearly five years later,
Hudson's Bay Company decided to abandon Spokane House be cause
it was too far from the Columbia River trade route. The fur
company built a new post on the Upper Columbia, Fort Colville,
which became the most important trading post in the area.
The splendid buildings of Spokane House soon crumbled away and
the Spokanes joined the other tribes in the trek to Fort
Colville for exchanging their pelts. Little else changed until
the arrival of the missionaries, which had a more lasting
influence than even the white man's guns.
The first contact the Spokanes had with the white man's religion
was probably through an Iroquois Indian employed by the
Northwest Fur Company. This Iroquois, whose name has not been
recorded, attempted to instruct the Indians in his Catholic
beliefs and succeeded in establishing the practice of placing
crosses on graves. Other employees of the fur company, who were
Catholic French Canadians, also instructed the Spokanes in the
essentials of the Christian faith. In 1819 on November 10, the
first white child was born in the interior of the Pacific
Northwest at Spokane House. This was Marcel, son of Marcel
Isadore Bemier and wife, Catholic French Canadians who sent the
boy to school at St. Boniface, Red River, Manitoba, as soon as
he was old enough.
About the same time, in 1825, Alexander Ross, Chief Trader at
Spokane House, received instructions from his superior to send
two Indian boys to the Episcopalian mission at Red River for an
education and Christian instruction. Spokane Garry and Pelly,
son of a Kootenai chief, were selected. They studied at the
mission for five years. When they returned to their tribes Garry
held Sunday services regularly, but eventually abandoned this
and served as an interpreter for Protestant missionaries. Marcel
Bemier also retumed to the Northwest. For many years he served
as a guide and interpreter for Catholic missionaries.
Samuel Parker, a Protestant, was the first white missionary to
visit the Spokanes. He arrived in 1836. The purpose of his visit
was to locate potential sites for Protestant missions. Two years
later Cushing Eells and Elk-anah Walker located at Tshimiakin
(Chamokane), now Walker's Prairie, a site suggested by Archibald
McDonald, who was in charge of the Hudson's Bay Company post at
Fort Colville. The Tshimakin site was selected because it was
located on the main trail the Indians had used for centuries,
and it was a natural site with water, meadow, and trees. By
November of 1838 Eells and Walker had completed their winter
quarters and reported they had a congregation of two hundred
Spokanes. As months went past, though, attendance at their
services dwindled, until finally in 1841 Eells was forced to
ride many miles to find Indians to whom he could preach.
Meanwhile, in the humble quarters at Tshimakin the two
missionaries studied the Spokane language. Like other Indian
languages it was an unwritten one, very difficult to grasp and
more difficult to speak. They succeeded well enough to compose
in the Spokane tongue a kind of primer for teaching the Indians
how to read and write their own language. This was printed on
Henry Harmon Spalding's Lapwai press in 1842. Titled ETSHIIT
THLU SITSKAI THLU SITSKAISITLINISH and oddly embellished with a
wood cut of a New England school house, it comprised sixteen
pages in all. It was the third book published in the western
United States.
Continued years of discouragement and the tragic aftermath of
the Whitman massacre in 1847 led to the abandonment of the
Tshimakin Mission on June 3, 1848. The Cayuse Indians who were
largely responsible for the massacre had come to the country of
the Spokanes to enlist allies in their war against the soldiers.
The Spokanes refused to join the militants. They provided
warriors to assure safe passage to Walla Walla for Eells, Walker
and their families, and did all they could to protect other
whites in the Cayuse War.
Before Protestant missionaries had left the Spokanes, the first
of the Catholic missionaries appeared. This was the Indians'
renowned "Blackrobe," Father Peter DeSmet, who was popular with
everybody. DeSmet's first trip to Spokane country was in
mid-spring 1842. Coming from the spectacular forests and lakes
of the Coeur d' Alenes, he found what he bluntly called a
desert. When he made subsequent trips, however, he changed his
mind. In one of his letters he wrote: "The whole neighborhood of
the Spokane River affords very abundant grazing and in many
sections is tolerably well timbered with pines of different
species."
Other Catholic missionaries followed DeSmet. Father Nicholas
Point, noted for his early paintings of Indians, established in
1842 a mission among the Coeur d' Alenes, from which he
frequently visited the Spokanes. The first known picture of a
Spokane Indian was painted by Nicholas Point, who stated in his
memoirs that this Indian was one hundred and four years old and
he had walked twenty miles on snowshoes seeking baptism. Another
Jesuit who visited the Spokanes from the Coeur d' Alene mission
was Father Joseph Joset, who played an important role in the War
of 1858. Both Joset and DeSmet served as peace makers after this
war. At the request of the United States Army, DeSmet made plans
for meeting with the Spokane, Coeur d' Alene, and Kalispel
tribes. Before leaving Walla Walla, enroute north, he was able
to secure the release of hostages taken by the anny, one
circumstance which made his task much easier.
When DeSmet finally returned to the pine-clad bluffs along the
Spokane River, he described the country's charms to which he had
succumbed after all:
"The distance from Fort Walla Walla to the great Spokan Prairie,
through which the Spokan river flows, is about 150 miles. This
whole region is undulating and hilly, and though generally of a
light soil, it is covered with a rich and nutritious grass,
forming grazing fields where thousands of cattle might easily be
raised. It is almost destitute of timber until you are within
thirty miles of the Spokan Prarrie, where you find open woods
and clusters of trees scattered far and wide; this portion,
particularly, contains a great number of lakes and ponds with
ranges of long walls of large basaltic columns and beds of
basalt. The country abounds in nutritious roots (bitter-root,
camas, etc., on which principally the Indians subsist for a
great portiori of the year. The Spokan Prarrie is about thirty
miles from north to south and from east to west, bounded all
around by well-wooded hills and mountains of easy access. The
soil is generally light, though covered with abundance of
grass."
At DeSmet's request, the army arranged for a visit of the eight
northern chiefs, including Spokane Garry, at Fort Vancouver.
Accompanied by DeSmet, the chiefs left Spokane country in April
1859 and spent three weeks sightseeing in the white man's
powerful fort. They were duly impressed by what they saw.
Father Joseph Cataldo was the first of Catholic missionaries, to
dwell among the Spokanes. Chief Baptiste Peone of the Upper
Spokanes had asked that a Catholic missionary be sent to his
band. Cataldo arrived in December 1866 and despite the
opposition of Garry, built a mission on Peone's land. It was
called St. Michael's. By February 1867 Cataldo had baptized one
hundred Spokane Indians as Catholics. The Indians called Cataldo
"S' Chuisse," which meant "Dried Salmon," because of his lean
and dried appearance. The use of an Indian name indicated
Cataldo's popularity, which was greatly enhanced by his ability
to fluently speak and understand the Spokane's language.
During the years that followed neither Protestant nor Catholic
missionaries were idle. Chief Lot's band, the Lower Spokanes,
built a church near Wellpinit for Presbyterian ministers in the
early 1880's. This church was ready for Christmas services,
during which some seventy Indians were baptized. Most of the
Upper Spokanes, who were Catholics, moved during this period to
the Coeur d' Alene Reservation, where they shared religious
services and inter-married with the Coeur d' Alenes. The first
Catholic Church located on the Spokane Reservation was built at
Ford in 1911. Called St. Joseph's this is still in use. At the
present time most of the Spokanes are Presbyterian or Catholic
and there are churches at Wellpinit, West End, and Ford.
Last Updated
December 21, 2004
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