Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 9.djvu/33

Rh of Astoria in the winter of 1813-14. Henry's journal, reproduced and annotated in Coues' "New Light on the History of the Greater Northwest" (Vol. II.), contains, under the date of December 8, 1813, at which time Henry was at Astoria, the following notation:

""The old Clatsop chief arrived with some excellent salmon and the meat of a large biche. There came with him a man about thirty years of age, who has extraordinarily dark red hair, and is the supposed offspring of a ship that was wrecked within a few miles of the entrance of this river many years ago. Great quantities of beeswax continue to be dug out of the sand near this spot, and the Indians bring it to trade with us.""

Later, in the entry for February 28, 1814, there appears:

""* * * They bring us frequently lumps of beeswax fresh out of the sand which they collect on the coast to the S., where the Spanish ship was cast away some years ago and the crew all murdered by the natives.""

It is seen that Henry speaks very positively concerning the origin of the wax deposit, and doubtless his utterances represent accurately the beliefs of the people of the time and place regarding the matter. It is to be regretted that other early explorers failed to take account of the occurrence of this wax. There is no mention of the matter, for example, in the journals of Lewis and Clark. As Coues remarks, this, wax is about the only product peculiar to the place that these men seem to have missed.

Horace S. Lyman, in his "History of Oregon," gives an interesting discussion of the first appearances of white men upon the Oregon coast as preserved in Indian traditions. His main authority is Silas B. Smith, an intelligent halfbreed, whose mother was a daughter of the Clatsop chief, Kobaiway. Mr. Smith made a special study of the traditions of his mother's people, as a result of which he assigns the earlier comings of white men to three separate occasions, the second of which was the wrecking of a vessel near Nehalem. To quote from Lyman: