by Don Berry
This I knew was sufficient for Mr. Rodgers, who from what had passed between us would go in to Bodega. This, of course, was hardly subtle enough for Echeandia. After mulling over the translated letter for a couple of days he
said he was afraid to send such a letter, for I had not ordered Mr. Rodgers positively to come in and that I had discouraged him from coming in from the manner in which I had spoken of the usage I had received . I told him I thought what I had written very reasonable.
He offered to write again. After extracting Echeandia‘s promise that the men would be well treated—that is, 'not be imprisoned and should be furnished with provision," Smith wrote Rogers a more straightforward directive to put in to San Francisco.
Smith was then to be permitted to remain unmolested in California until word came from Mexico; or he could leave at any time he liked as long as he did no more "dashing around the country," as Duran had called it. In other words, if he could find a ship to take him off he could go.
But no more spying.
This was impracticable, and another impasse seemed in the making. Through the generosity of Captain Cooper somewhat more lenient terms were arranged. In effect, Cooper mortgaged all he owned against the good conduct of Jedediah’s party in leaving Mexican territory, the terms being that "they should make the best of their way out of the Mexican dominions, without staying to hunt within the territory, and on these terms Mr. S. left for San Francisco."
The route Smith was to take was clearly specified in the bond given by Cooper; the salient point here being that he was to cross the Bay of San Francisco at the Straits of Carquinez and proceed directly north. He was allowed two months to outfit the party and get them out of California:
. . under no condition will he delay on the way a longer time than is necessary .. . he will make no hostile excursion, and make no trip toward the coast or in the region of his [Salt Lake] establishment south of the 42nd parallel.
Echeandia further refused to permit him to recruit more men to reinforce his party, though Smith "found several willing to engage, both Americans & Eng1ish."
Sometime during his enforced stay at Monterey, Jedediah learned that Thomas Virgin (left at San Bernardino recuperating from a head wound) had been arrested and thrown in the "Callibozo" at San Diego. He succeeded in getting permission for Virgin to be released, to rejoin the party that was now at the San Francisco Presidio.
There now remained the problem of getting the trappers outfitted for the journey.
Smith’s resources consisted of some 1,600 pounds of beaver, in the possession of the party at San Francisco. With another of the friendly sea captains—which breed provided Jedediah with all the help he got on either California trip—he arranged to sell these skins at $2.50 a pound. Considering the circumstances, this was a good price; he was very far away from any situation where they would bring more, and the (roughly)- $4,000 they would bring would go a long way toward outlitting his party.
On Thursday, November 15, the last of the Monterey arrangements were concluded, about a month after negotiations had opened. Echeandia had apparently become suspicious again, and at the last minute Smith was obliged to sign a note binding himself for the sum of $30,000 "for the faithful performance of a certain Bond, given to the Mexican Govt dated at Monterey."
This, together with Captain Cooper’s bond, reassured Echeandia to the extent that he forthwith issued the passport, permitting passage of the party and their goods, together with "a total of one hundred mules and one hundred and fifty horses."
In the early afternoon of the 15th Smith found himself a comparatively free man. He sailed for San Francisco on the Franklin, whose captain was to purchase his furs on arrival there.
III
The Franklin put in to San Francisco on the 17th, and Smith saw Rogers and his men for the first time since he had left them in September. (It had taken him about four months to make his trip back and forth across the Great Basin; and almost half that long just to get permission from Echeandia to leave.)
Smith reported to General Clark that when he finally reached his party he had I found them in
St. Francisco in a very deplorable state and [they] would have suffered immensely for
want of victuals and clothing, was it not for the timely assistance of Mr. Vermont3 a German gentleman who happened to be trading on the coast, to whom Mr. Smith is under many obligations.
Luis Arguello was now back in his position of comandante of the San Francisco garrison, and to him Smith reported. Arguello approved the passport, and gave him permission to garrison himself at San José, a favor Smith probably requested because of the expense of living in San Francisco.
The furs were sold aboard the Franklin on the 18th (1,568 pounds at $2.50 a pound= $3,920, plus ten otter skins at (probably) $1.50-52). For the next week Smith scurried about San Francisco getting supplies. Finally, on the 26th, the whole party moved off for Mission San José, "presenting," notes one observer, "rather a formidable appearance?
The horses that had been with the party had not fared any better in San Francisco than Rogers and the men. Smith arranged with Father Duran, his old accuser, to use the mission blacksmith shop, and nearly a month was spent getting the horses back in shape and making final preparations for departure.
Isaac Galbraith came in on December 6, apparently having decided not to remain in California. There is, after all, only so much a man is willing to put up with for the sake of a pleasant climate. A week later Thomas Virgin arrived, considerably the worse for wear. While in prison he had been "frequently without anything to eat and strictly forbidden to speak to any one and abused in almost every way .... He was much rejoiced to see us and I am sure I was quite glad to see the old man again."
Arguello was not lax in the matter of escorts; a military detail of ten men was to ensure that the American trappers did not somehow become lost while making their way out of California. Smith had discovered there was no boat to take him across at the Straits of Carquinez; and it was entirely too wide to swim. Reasonably enough, he expected Arguello would not object to his moving farther up until he could find a place to "swim my horses and carry my goods over on a raft which could not be done at the mouth." A gross optimism:
. . . he would hear nothing of this proposition but insisted that I should cross at the particular place directed by the Genl. I then told him to furnish the boat and I was ready to cross. This he could not do but said I must wait untill the Genl. could be advised of the situation of things and give further instructions.
Smith left, finally fed up to the teeth with the petty buck-passing of Mexican ofiicialdom. He stormed back to San José; wrote the American minister in Mexico complaining of his treatment; wrote both Echeandia and Arguello, informing them, in effect, that the game had gone on long enough. He was going home, and if his route differed in some respects from the one they outlined—it was just too bad. But he was going.
On December 30—Samuel Tulloch is sitting in Peter Skene Ogden’s tent a thousand miles away—Jedediah and his men finally got off from the Mission San José into a miserable, dreary rain, heading north for another point of international friction: the HBC post at Fort Vancouver.
***
So Smith began to trudge out of what his biographer has called "the California quagmire? The party saw the new year of 1828 ushered in through curtains of rain.
His purchase of so many horses and mules was a shrewd investment. They would serve not only as transportation back home, but as negotiable goods. The California price would have run around $10 a head; low mountain price anywhere from $50 to $60, and mules higher still. He had a sizable, self-propelled payload in his cavalcade; $5,000 worth in the mountains at an absolute. If he could manage to get even half of them through alive, he would be more than amply paid for the beaver. On his present intended route north to the Columbia, then east on his return to the mountains—he had no reason to expect the terrible attrition of a desert crossing. After he reached the Columbia he w
ould be following fairly well-traveled routes; those taken by the HBC trapping parties based at Fort Vancouver. There was a reasonable hope of making it without too severe losses. Disregarding, for the moment, the viciously bad luck that had been dogging him.
The prospects were better than fair, as they set out. On January 2 he crossed the San Joaquin River; goods carried on rafts, and the horses swimming across without a single casualty. A good beginning. Furthermore, beaver were plentiful on the tributaries of the San Joaquin.
Since Smith had set out on a new course, as his own man, he apparently felt that the 'no trapping" provision of his passport was null and void. He spent almost the entire month of January trapping on the San Joaquin, and the hunt was good. In a two-day period he took forty-five beaver. If he was concerned that his hunting might endanger the man who had become personally responsible for him—Captain Cooper—there is no indication of it. Beaver was his business, and that was what he was after.
It wasn’t all smooth going. The weather remained consistently foul as they turned north. Mud was deep and gummy, and the horses’ progress was pitifully slow. Two men—the long-time troublemaker James Reed and one Louis Pombert ('Pompare," whose presence is a mystery)—deserted while on a trapping foray, taking their eleven traps with them. This was a serious blow, because Smith was extremely short on traps. These represented almost a quarter of his remaining supply, and their loss imposed a severe handicap. On the other hand, he was rid of James Reed at last, and it may be that was some small compensation.
The Indians at first had been remarkably friendly; more so than any other groups he had met. But the farther north he pushed the more frightened the bands became. He came to encounter more and more frequently the complete desertion of lodges in the face of his parties, and that was a bad sign.
He constantly had to make rafts to cross the "slous"; the whole area seemed to be a great bog. By late February he was on the American Rivera (which he called the Wild). Here he had his first Indian trouble.
Toussaint Marechal and John Turner were about four miles from the camp, checking their traps, and "seeing some indians around their traps who would not come to them but attempted to run off they fired at them and Turner killed one and Mareshal wounded another. I [Smith] was extremely sorry for the occurrence and reprimanded them severely for their impolitic conduct."
The severe reprimand took the form of forbidding them to set traps, at least temporarily.
He held no high opinion of the Central California Indians, finding them, in fact, inferior to the beaver, "either from indolence or from a deficiency of genius." This surprised him; he thought the California country had been blessed with "a more than ordinary Share of .. . bounties" and seemed "rather calculated to expand than restrain the energies of man."
But if the energies of man had been restrained in California, the same could not be said about the bears he met. Their energies, at least, had been expanded. On the 8th of March, while hunting, Harrison Rogers had his mountain baptism from a bear, being badly mauled. The party had to remain in camp until he was able to travel again, while Smith dressed his wounds with another unlikely combination from the mountain apothecary: cold water and a salve of soap and sugar.
A month later Smith had two encounters himself. (He wears his hair long, now, covering the mutilated ear he received in his first encounter; one brow is still disligured and scarred.) Being intimately acquainted with the character of the bear, Smith cheerfully plunged head first into a creek; a little later another bear grabbed the tail of his horse. The horse departed, with Jedediah hanging on. The parade continued for forty or fifty yards, with the frightened horse setting such a pace that the bear could not close with him. At last the bear let go, and Smiths notes in his journal that he was well satisfied to 'get rid of his company on any terms."
During the first few months of the trip Jedediah had been trending generally north and northeast, trapping up the Sacramento valley on the eastern side. By the end of March the party had turned west again, reaching the Sacramento . River. The valley here was about fifty miles wide; ahead and to the north the mountains seemed to close in around them. (They were nearing the head of the Sacramento valley.) Unable to cross the Sierra Nevada to the east, he was forced to slant otf toward the coast; again in direct contradiction to his permission.
The party crossed the Sacramento in the second week of April, about thirty miles below present Redding., From here he angled northwest; his route was probably roughly parallel to
US 299.
The Indians he met now were no longer meek and friendly; nor were they, apparently, much in awe of the white party. The hostility of the tribes through which they passed had increased as they neared the present Oregon boundary.
On April 15 there was an outright attack. The Indians followed parallel to their course all the next day, making a tremendous amount of noise, which did little to improve the morale of the trappers. The country was much rougher now; they were moving into the coastal mountains. The combination of hard travel and the constant menace of the Indians wore hard.
After he made camp for the night of the 16th—still to the Indian chorus—Jedediah took out a small party to see if he couldn’t improve the situation. As best he could he tried to communicate to the howling band that his intentions were friendly and that he meant them no harm. The Indians were about as receptive to his communication as Mexican officialdom had been. They wouldn’t listen. They kept up the constant din, standing with their bows strung, and refused to approach in answer to his overtures.
Finally Smith fired on them, "to intimidate them and prevent them from doing me further injury." Two were hit; the remainder scattered, leaving some of their goods. The trappers moved on.
Traveling through the mountainous country was becoming an ordeal. Several hundred head of horses and mules had to be gotten across streams and through canyons and ravines, negotiated along the edge of cliffs, steered through the brush, scrabbling on rocky slides, with inadequate feed—a few miles a day was good, and drained the last drop of energy from
both men and animals.
Smith was following the Trinity River—which he called the Indian Scalp—by late April. Following where the steep and rocky ravines would permit, at any rate-moving steadily toward the coast, where he hoped the nightmare would end.
The minor skirmishes with the Indians continued with the necessity of firing on them. This he hated, though not necessarily through his normal Christian inclination. As a practical matter it was dangerous. If the result was intimidation, fine. If it was an increase of hostility, not so fine. There was no way to know, but he had little choice in the matter.
He began to see evidence of white tools: trees on which axes had been employed; lodges of split pine. He was now among the Hupa peoples. The Hupa were the far-southern fringe of a whole cultural complex that extended northward as far as present Alaska: the Northwest Coast culture. They were farthest from the center—which was along the British Columbia coast—and the least highly developed of the Northwest Coast people. Still, they were more vigorous and with a higher technological achievement than the Indians he had left in the valley.
The Hupa were also the southem edge of another sphere of influence: HBC’s. Trade goods from Fort Vancouver would trickle down to the Hupa through the customary intergroup Indian trading. HBC’s trapping parties came down nearly this far on their Southern expeditions under Alexander McLeod. (They were shortly to push even farther, into the "Bonaventura" country: the Sacramento valley.)
By May 10 Smith was camped on the Trinity in the vicinity of present Burnt Ranch. On an air line, he was now about forty miles from the coast at Eureka.
On that date the second journal of his clerk, Harrison Rogers, begins. He lists the nineteen-man party (including Smith) and adds a musing sentiment on their diversity:
Many men of many minds, and many kinds of many,
Kinderate of God’s creation.
When young in life and forced t
o guess my road,
And not one friend to shield my bark from harm,
The world received me in its vast abode,
And honest toil procured its plaudits warm.
Honest toil they had in sufficient quantity, though as yet the plaudits were virtually inaudible. Rogers’ first entry may be taken as typical:
. . . 'The travelling very bad, several very steep, rocky and brushy points of mountains to go up and down, with our band of horses, and a great many of them so lame and worn out that we can scarcely force them along; 15 lossed on the way, in the brush, 2 of them with loads; the most of the men as much fatigued as the horses.
On May 16 Marechal and Turner were sent ahead to survey the route. They came back the next day with heartening news: the party was within "15 or 20 miles of the North Pacific Ocean; they report game plenty, such as elk and deer; they report the traviling favourable to what it has been for 30 or 40 m. back."
CHAPTER 13
“Murderers of your people & Robbers of your property”
ON MAY 19 the party camped within sight of the ocean, only six miles away. "A fair view," said Rogers.
But there is a vast difference between a fair view from six miles away and actually reaching it. This they could not do. They were not able to move from this camp until four days later, owing to the lameness of their horses and bad weather. Heavy fogs had set in, and they were unable to find their way. Horses became lost, men detached to look for them came back empty-handed. During the period they were in this enforced encampment, Rogers and Thomas Virgin rode out toward the ocean. Although they "got within 80 or 100 yards of the beach," they were unable to ride down to it because of the steep rocky banks and brush. On their way back to camp Rogers pursued some elk, lost them, and went after a "black bare."
While Rogers was gone, Virgin remained with the horses, and was attacked. The Indians shot several arrows into one of the horses; Virgin shot and killed one of the attacking party.