Page:Oregon, her history, her great men, her literature.djvu/113

Rh and another in 1836 swept over the same region. However, Indians, whose methods of calculation are somewhat uncertain, have fixed the time of the Great Fire in the Oregon Coast Range at about 1846, in which year it is known from other sources that a fire devastated the country south of Tillamook. Indians connect the Great Fire with the coming of the first trading ship into Coos Bay. To know the year when the first trading ship appeared in Coos Bay is to know, therefore, the date of the great Oregon Coast Range fire of which Nature and the Red Man tell us. Some information bearing on this date has been obtained.

In 1898 Chief Cutlip of the Coos Bay Indians related the following through an official interpreter to Major T. J. Buford, of die Siletz Agency When Chief Cutlip was a young man a sailing vessel came into Coos Bay to trade for furs. It was the first ship his people had ever seen. They stood on the shore and watched the ship until it came well into the Bay; and believing it to be the "Spirit boat," they all ran away. When the vessel anchored, the men aboard di^layed bright garments and glittering beads and other trinkets, and beckoned to the Indians to come to them. Cutlip, being the chief, took two of his men and ventured aboard. The. officers gave each a suit of clothes and many other presents among which was sugar — ^the first which the Indians had ever tasted — and then indicated by signs that they wished to trade with the Indians. Cutlip returned to his people; and after a parl^ the tribe decided to trade ¥rith the white men. This was the beginning of fur trade ¥nth the whites who came by ship to Coos Bay.

Destruction of Life. This being the year of the great fire along the Coast Range, the superstitious Indians attributed the fire to the presence of the white man's boat. There had been other forest fires in that locality, but this one was so terrible that much game and many Indians were burned to death and the Indians who survived lamented the coming