.
By ELMO SCOTT WATSON
UGUST 5, 1834. In a lush, upland
meadow, in what is now the
state of Idaho, stands a little
stockaded fort, its walls of
freshly-peeled cottonwood logs
gleaming white in the early
morning sunshine. Inside the
fort a motley crowd of men Is
gathered around a tall flagstaff,
Hunters and trappers, whose
greasy, smoke begrimed buck-
skins tell of a hundred camp-
fires In the great West, rub
elbows with men whose garb bespeak the East
In the murmur of talk the nasal twang of the
Down East Yankee rises sharply above the
gruffer tones of the frontiersmen,
Apart from the others stand two young fellows
destined for future fame as men of science. One
{s Thomas Nuttall (or Nuthall), a botanist fresh
from Harvard college, and the other Is J. RB.
Townsend of Philadelphia, physician and ornl-
thologist. As they talk to a third man, scarcely
older than themselves, their deferential manner
toward him stamps him as the leader of this
varied company. And he is, for this is “Capt”
Nathaniel J. Wyeth, founder of the “Columbia
River Fishing and Trading company,” a young
loston business man, but already a veteran of
westward travel
Now Wyeth steps forward to the foot of the
flagstaff. In his hand he holds a folded flag. He
attaches It to the halyard and as it rises to the
peak the roaring of muskets and the popping of
pistols mingle with the whining crack of long
rifles. As the banner ripples out in the sun-
shine in the red, white and blue glory of the
Stars and Stripes a mighty shout goes up from
the assembled company,
Thus was another wilderness outpost estab.
lished and, although this shouting throng may
not realize it now, the curtain has been rung
up on another act In the epic drama which is
to be called “The Winning of the West”
Two months later Wyeth is to write to an
uncle back East, saying: “I have bullt a fort on
the Snake River, which I have named Fort Hall
from the oldest gentleman In the concern, Mr.
Henry Hall. We manufactured a magnificent flag
from some unbleached sheeting, a little red flan-
nel and a few blue patches, saluted It with dam.
aged powder and wet it in villainous alcohol;
and after all, I assure you, it makes a very
respectable appearance amid the dry and deso-
late regions of central America. Its bastions
stand a terror to the skulking Indian and a
beacon of safety to the fugitive hunter. It Is
manned by 12 men and has constantly loaded
in the bastions 100 guns and rifles. These bas
tions command both the inside and outside of
the fort. After building this fort I sent messen-
gers to the neighboring nations to induce them
to come toc trade’
» » ® * » ® »
August 5, 1034. The modern city of Pocatello,
féaho, Is in gala array. Crowds surge through
its streets, Flags are flying. Bands are blaring.
There are parades, floats, pageants, speeches.
For today is the beginning of the four-day cele-
bration of the event which took place just a
hundred years ago—the founding of the post
that was “decreed by fate to be a centrifugal
point of trade, commerce and recuperation.” Such
is the characterization of this post by Jennle
Broughton Brown, whose splendid “Fort Hall on
the Oregon Trail” was published two years ago
by the Caxton Printers, Ltd. of Caldwell, Idaho,
In the years that followed Fort Hall was a bea.
con of safety not only to “the fugitive hunter”
but to many a weary emigrant over the Oregon
Trail which ran beneath its walls; It was a
port of call for nearly every wayfarer—trapper,
trader, missionary, explorer, guide and army of-
filcer—whose name looms large in the early his-
tory of the West; It was to have a stirring part
in the later stagecoach and freighting days; and
it was a center of activity in more than one
Indian war when the red man was making his
last desperate stand against the white man,
- - . » - - * .
The founder of Fort Hall was Nathaniel J.
Wyeth. Born in Cambridge, Mass, January 29,
1802, of distinguished ancestry (his mother was
a relative of John Hancock), Wyeth was ingended
for Harvard college of which both his father
and oldest brother were graduates. But he was
impatient to begin a business career and de-
clined to go to college,
By the time he was thirty years old he had
made a modest success in his home community,
managing & farm and engaging In the ice trade
which brought in an annual Income of some
$1,200. Then, influenced by the writings of Hall
J. Kelley, founder of the “Oregon Colonization
Soclety,” Wyeth determined to organize a trad.
ing company to exploit the rich natural resources
of the Columbla river region In the Pacific
Northwest. His plan was to lead an overland
zpedition to the Oregon country and establish
trading posts which were to be supplied by ships
that were to sail around Cape Horn to the head
of navigation on the Columbia and from there
to bring back the furs and salmon collected at
the posts,
On March 11, 1832, the expedition set out.
But, although they were lucky at Independence,
Mo., to fall in with Milton Sublette of the Rocky
Mountain Fur company, who was leading a party
of trappers and traders Into the mountains,
misfortune dogged the footsteps of the eastern
“tenderfeet.” First some of Wyeth's men grew
faint-hearted and turned back, Then they were
attacked by the flerce Blackfeet Indians and lost
three men killed and eight badly wounded.
.
Nathaniel J. Wyeth
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Eventually Wyeth and the remnants of his party
reached the Columbia In a destitute condition,
But they were kindly received by Dr. John Me
Loughlin, chief factor of the Columbia river dis
trict for the Hudson's Bay company at Fort
Vancouver, and there began a iasting friendship
between McLoughlin and Wyeth, even though
the Yankee adventurer was a potential business
rival of the H. B. C, factor.
At Vancouver came the crowning blow to
Wyeth's misfortunes, He learned that the ship
which was bringing his supplies around Cape
Horn had been shipwrecked and all of his goods
lost. Nothing remained for him to do but to
release his men from their contract and return
home to recoup his lost fortunes. Some of his
men remained in the Oregon country and these
“remnants of Wyeth's first expedition became
part of the nucleus around which later Oregon
immigrants clustered” So from the historical
point of view the expedition was not an utter
loss,
Accompanied by two men Wyeth set out for
the East In the spring of 1833 and by November
8 of that year he was home again after an
absence of 10 months, having “made the first
continuous land journey on record from Boston
to the mouth of the Columbia” It is a tribute
to both the integrity of the man and the force
of his personality that despite his failure he was
able to Interest his friends In a second expedi-
tion. Within 12 days after his return to Massa.
chusetts he had organized the “Columbia River
Fishing and Trading Company,” had secured
money from New York and Boston business men
and chartered another ship for the Journey
around Cape Horn,
On his return trip east he had again come into
contact with representatives of the Rocky Moun-
tain Fur company, this time in the persons of
Milton Sublette and Thomas Fitzpatrick, and
had obtained from them the contract for supply-
ing the merchandise to be used In their trading
operations, So he purchased about 13.000 pounds
of goods to fill this contract, part of It in east.
ern markets and, shipping it down the Ohio,
secured the remainder in St. Louis. Again he
prepared to start from Independence, There he
was joined by the two young scientists, Nuttall
and Townsend, who were also Oregon-bound,
But a more Important contingent of his party
was a group of five men, whose presence is
accounted for by Mrs. Brown as follows: “When
Wyeth had returned to Boston the preceding
year, he was accompanied by two Indian lads,
one about eighteen years of age, a kind of serv.
ant of all work, and a half-breed boy of thirteen,
the son of a Hudson's bay trader and a Flathead
beauty. Their presence in the East, and also the
visit of a party of Indians to St. Louis In search
of 'a Book, the Guide to Heaven,’ had aroused
great zeal In missionary circles. Partly as a
result of these visits, a small party of Methodist
missionaries was in Wyeth's company for safe
conduct on thelr way to the Oregon Indians,
Their leader was Jason Lee, described by Town.
send as a ‘tall, powerful man, capable of han-
dling men in a wild country,’ With him was his
nephew, Daniel Lee, and three lay brethren,
P, L. Edwards, Cyrus Shephard and C. M. Walk.
er, ull of whom proved to be good travelers and
excellent companions on a long tedious trip.”
The journey across the plains was compara-
tively uneventful, His destination was a place
on the Snake river in the country claimed by
the 8hoshonl or Snake Indians, En route there
his party was joined by Thomas McKay, a Hud-
son's Pay man, who was hunting in that region
with a band of Canadians and Indians and who
traveled along with him until he reached the site
which he picked out for his fort,
It was a natural meadow of rich bottom land,
enclosed by a sharp bend of the Snake river on
two sides and by a slough forming a protection
on the third, Arriving there on July 14, Wyeth
lost po time in getting to work on the fort
According to Townsend, part of the men began
felling trees, collecting drift logs and making
corrals for thelr horses while the rest were sent
out to hunt for meat. Osborne Russell, a young-
a trapper, records in his journal that “On the
15h we commenced the actual construction of
the fort, which was a stockade eighty feet
sunk two and one-half feet in the ground and
tions eight feet square at the opposite angles.”
When the hunters returned on Saturday, July
28, they found the stockade virtually completed
the boundaries of the state of Idaho.
sooner, joined them,
Thus began the history of this famous fort,
was a happy reunion with his friend, Jason Lee,
he called Fort William, But during the next two
or three years, although he worked tirelessly,
the competition of the Hudson's Bay company
80 his enterprise for which he had had such
high hopes ended in failure. In 1837 Fort Hall
was sold to the Hudson's Bay company and Fort
William was left In charge of C. M. Walker with
instructions to “lease it to some trusty persen
for 15 years.” Then Wyeth returned to his home
town of Cambridge to attempt to retrieve his
fost fortunes by going Into the ide business again,
In 1844 Jason Lee also went back to his home
town, Stanstead, In eastern Cangda, and there he
died the next year. But his fame, as the ploneer
missionary of Oregon and the founder of a school
which later became Willamette university was
already secure. In 1857 Doctor McLoughlin died,
poverty-stricken and broken.hearted, a “Man
Without a Country.” For the Hudson's Bay com-
pany had removed him from his position be
cause he had not exerted himself to discourage
American settlement in the Oregon country and
his efforts to become an American citizen were
thwarted by Americans who remembered only
that he had once been an employee of a British
company and who forgot how he had befriended
their fellow-countrymen when they were in dire
need,
In contrast to this sad ending to the man who
was once the “Emperor of the West,” it is pleas.
ant to record that when death had come to
Nathaniel J, Wyeth the previous year it had
found him once more a prosperous man of affairs,
even though a century was to pass before his
name would be widely honored In connection with
the celebration of the fort which he founded
Fort Hall on the n Trail,
@ byw Newspaper Unlon
SHOW INCREASE
Five-Year Gain Announced
by Statisticians.
You can dodge death, But you
can't avold it. Medical sclence has
ferreted out the causes and provided
treatments for most of the ailments
that used to carry off children dur-
ing the first ten years of life— diph-
theria, infantile diarrhea, tubercu-
logls. And more and more of the
diseases of adult life are being
tracked down.
But die you must: and if you
manage to get out of the path of
tuberculosis, an automobile may pre
pare you for permanent interment,
(Automobile accidents, incidentally,
rank tenth In the causes of death)
Life is as precarious as ever it was,
Statisticians can figure what your
chances of living are. Two mathe
maticians of a large Insurance com-
showing how long you may reason
will probably gecount
what they've found:
A boy born today may
live 50 years. In one decade his life.
ease will account for your demise,
note that the ills of old age-
betes—have Increased as cau
death during the last few decades,
There are several reasons for this,
First, medi
gre overcome, the remaining ones
take an increasingly large toll—
Scientific Progress.
British Engineers Plan
Way to Harness Tides
In Britain, the Severn estuary has
blz tides, und there is a scheme for
making a barrage across this. A de.
tailed official report was recently
made on the project, writes a corre
spondent in the London Spectator.
It would cost about 50,000,000
pounds and by itself could not com.
pete with electrical power generated
by burning coal. But with the aid
of water power from the dams In
the Wye valley nearby, it is estimat.
ed that it could supply all the south-
west of England and Wales with
power at two-thirds of the present
cont,
Schemes like this have to be care
ful not to upset existing arrange-
ments, and Bristol 1s naturally very
anxious Jest a huge barrage should
{interfere with navigation. In order
to settle this question, wonderfully
accurate models of the river bed
have been made, and the effects of 8
barrage on currents and on siiting-
up have been studied on the model,
The model is so accurate that,
when a current of muddy water was
run through it, the mud particles
were deposited so as to reproduce
with extraordinary fidelity the sand
banks and shoals that exist in the
real river. The results seem con
elusive that a barrage could have no
serious effects on shipping.
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