Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 19.djvu/193



The calendar year nineteen hundred and eighteen marks important centenaries in Oregon history which even the stress of war activities should not permit to go by unnoticed, although not formally commemorated. The immediate events belong more particularly to the vicinity of the mouth of the Columbia river, but their significance and influence apply to the entire stretch of the Oregon Country facing the waters of the Pacific ocean and extending back as far as the summit of the Rocky mountains. They relate to the chain of title by which Oregon finally became a part of the grand Republic now shedding the blood of her sons in the struggle to preserve the civilization of the world from autocratic rule and military aggrandizement. The events of 1818 also direct attention to the fact that the history of Oregon abounds in dramatic incident.

In the early morning of August 19th, 1818, a sloop of war floating the stars and stripes dropped anchor close to Peacock Spit off the bar at the entrance to the Columbia river. This vessel, named the Ontario, was of five hundred and fifty-nine tons burden, carried twenty guns and a crew of one hundred and fifty officers and seamen, and was under the command of Captain James Biddle. By direction of the State Department of the United States she had sailed from New York in October, 1817, under commission "to proceed to the Columbia River, with a view to assert on the part of the United States the claim to the sovereignty, by some symbolical or appropriate mode adapted to the occasion." Leaving his vessel at anchor outside the bar Captain Biddle "proceeded in with three boats well armed and manned with more than fifty officers and seamen." The party landed inside Cape Disappointment on the quiet shore of Baker's Bay near where the buildings of Fort Canby are now located, and there went through the ceremonies of waving and saluting the American flag (with three cheers), of turning up a sod of earth and