Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 37.djvu/201



Rh

A chapter has described the last few days of travel and the arrival at the Columbia River of the first white woman, Mrs. Narcissa Whitman, to make the journey from the Missouri River over what later came to be known as the Oregon trail; her companion, Mrs. Eliza Spalding, arrived two days later. These two now become the first of their sex and nation to travel from Fort Walla Walla down the Columbia to the Hudson's Bay Company headquarters at Fort Vancouver, a distance of about three hundred miles by the river's course. The journey, as described by Mrs. Whitman, is now continued.

Women had traveled upon the Columbia during previous years; the heroines Sacajawea and Madame Dorion, for instance, Mrs. John McLoughlin and her children, Mrs. James Douglas, and the wives of other fur traders. The waterways wherever possible furnished the regular routes of travel during the fur trade period. This journey becomes a novel experience for these two white women. The boat which carried them was itself novel. It was of the canoe type but better called a batteau, propelled or guided by paddles or oars, between thirty and forty feet long and carrying exceedingly large loads.