Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/44

28 From this time on, the fur trading vessels to the north Pacific rapidly increased. The profits of the fur trade were so enormous that men and money rushed into it from every maritime nation. It was typical of and the forerunner of the California gold craze which came along about sixty years later. The only difference being, so far as the argonauts were concerned, was that in the rush to get furs all had to go in ships and brave the perils of the sea; while in the mad rush to California tens of thousands made their way overland from the Missouri river by ox teams. But on reaching these two era-marking El Doradoes, we see another wholly dissimilar plan to get the gold. The fur trading sea captains did not hunt for any furs or descend to the menial labor of digging gold from mother earth. They took the lordly and aristocratic way of working the heathen savage to catch the furs on land and sea, and then trading him out of his pelts with bad whiskey, shoddy shirts, and glass beads. But the California miner for gold had to get in and dig for himself to get gold. Indians there were in plenty in California, but no lordly son of the forest would ever demean himself with the base work of using a pick and shovel. And here we see the two races face to face, opposed. One will hunt, and shoot, and fish, and kill, and starve before he will work. The other will work and trade, and cheat and rob, before he will starve.

At the same time that Gray and Kendrick were out here from Boston, two English ships, the Felice and Iphegenia, already noticed, were here for furs. The Englishmen had come prepared to build a small vessel on the coast and making their headquarters at Nootka, erected there the first house built north of California. This house built 122 years ago was two stories high, with a defensive breast work all around it and a cannon mounted on top of it. Captain Kendrick of the Columbia, also built a house, but whether before or after the erection of the English house the record does not show. Being inquired of, the Indian chief, Maquinna, and all his sub-chiefs, who were in native possession of the land at Nootka, answered that they sold no land to the British captains, and that the American Captain Kendrick was the only man to whom they had ever sold any land. So that so far as getting the Indian title to lands was concerned, history shows that the Americans were the first and only people to recognize the Indian title to lands on the Pacific coast. The Englishmen who built the house, above described, got in all the furs they could and prepared ^ to leave for China in September, 1788. They tore down the house they had erected, put part of the materials on board the ships, and gave the balance to the Americans. In other respects, they were not so liberal. They strongly urged the Americans not to remain on the coast and brave the winter storms, avoided carrying any letters from the Americans to China, declared they had not got more than fifty otter skins when they had in fact, thousands. But the Americans stayed and wintered at Nootka.

With the opening of the spring of 1789, the two American ships pushed their work of exploration to new locations and other tribes of Indians, getting in large lots of furs, before the English or Spanish ships could reach the coast, and during the summer, surveying the Straits of Fuca. By the middle of June, the Englishmen, had returned from China, and immediately engaged in trade for furs. But prior to the arrival of the English ships, two Spanish vessels reached Nootka under command of Lieutenant Martinez and Captain Haro, who came prepared to assert and enforce the rights of Spain to the country. Finding the English ships had two sets of papers, one English and one Portuguese, prepared to sail under two different flags, the Spaniards promptly arrested the Englishmen, and thereby hangs the tale of a good-sized tempest in a teapot settlement at Nootka sound. Back and under the whole trouble was the strife to get furs from the Indians. The Spaniards had never made any settlement in the country or left a single priest to convert the heathen. Neither had the English. But the Spaniards claimed the country by right of discovery, and if now by asserting that right vigorously they could put the Eng-