Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson's Lost Pacific Empire: A Story of Wealth, Ambition, and Survival

by Stark, Peter

  59 sliced the lines that secured it: Franchère, Narrative, p. 53.

  by rolling him in blankets and rubbing him with salt: Ross, Adventures, pp. 28–29.

  Dozens of native canoes paddled out: Franchère, Narrative, p. 55.

  60 “For other traits, they are very lascivious”: Ibid., p. 74.

  “not accustomed to have his intentions frustrated”: George Gilbert, The Death of Captain James Cook (From Gilbert’s Narrative of Cook’s Last Voyage, 1776–1780), Hawaiian Historical Society Reprints, No. 5 (Honolulu: Paradise of the Pacific Press, 1926), p. 11.

  61 they now wanted souvenirs: Irving, Astoria, p. 68.

  62 “Storming and stamping on deck”: Ross, Adventures, p. 32.

  63 served as boatswain aboard a New England ship: “Boatswain John Young, His Adventures in Hawaii Recalled,” New York Times, February 14, 1886.

  rowed ashore at Tohehigh Bay: Franchère, Narrative, pp. 59–60.

  “He received us kindly”: Ross, Adventures, pp. 32–33.

  generating profits for the royal treasury: Franchère, Narrative, pp. 60–61.

  anchored in Waikiki Bay: Ross, Adventures, p. 34.

  64 “It would be difficult to imagine”: Irving, Astoria, pp. 75–76.

  wanted to hire thirty or forty Hawaiians: Ibid., p. 75.

  65 “[F]rom the good conduct of the sailors”: Ross, Adventures, p. 41.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  67 Here wind squalls from the northwest: Franchère, Narrative, pp. 85–86.

  They can literally stand: Interview with Daniel Evans, professional sea captain, Adventuress, May 2012.

  68 Captain Thorn gave orders to prepare: Franchère, Narrative, p. 86; Ross, Adventures, pp. 54–56; Irving, Astoria, pp. 78–80. Ross gives the most complete and detailed account of the interaction between Thorn and Fox over the launching of the small boat. He was on the Tonquin at the time and added details that did not appear in Irving’s account, which was published earlier than Ross’s account.

  69 “Mr. Fox, if you are afraid of water”: Ross, Adventures, p. 55.

  A mere twenty ships had: William Henry Gray, A History of Oregon, 1792–1849, Drawn from Personal Observations and Authentic Information (Portland, OR: Harris & Holman, 1870), pp. 13–15.

  Spaniards first had sailed northward: Oxford Atlas of Exploration, p. 140.

  as far as today’s Oregon: Sir Francis Drake, sailing for Queen Elizabeth, coasted Oregon in 1579 during his circumnavigation, though whether he landed there remains under debate. See John Barrow, The Life, Voyages, and Exploits of Sir Francis Drake, with Numerous Original Letters from Him and the Lord High Admiral to the Queen and Great Officers of State, 2nd ed., abridged (London: John Murray, 1844), pp. 59–66.

  70 With Russia poking around Alaska’s Pacific Coast: Ruby and Brown note the Russians discovered the value of sea otter in Kamchatka at the end of the seventeenth century. Ruby and Brown, The Chinook Indians, p. 36. A group of merchants formed an association to hunt otters in Alaska in 1785 (p. 78). Later, in 1799, that association became the “Russian American Fur Company,” officially sanctioned by the czar (p. 78). Ruby and Brown note that Russians had been operating from Kodiak Island as early as 1783. The Juno, formerly an American ship, now owned by the RAFC, sailed past the Columbia Bar in 1806, while Lewis and Clark were encamped near the river’s mouth. They were looking for another place to begin trade as they’d run into trouble in Sitka. They did not cross into the river (p. 109). Ruby and Brown provide more detail of Russian presence along the Northwest Coast on pp. 117–118, 126, 138.

  Franchère tells of meeting an old blind man: Franchère, Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America, pp. 112–13. Ruby and Brown also relate stories told by Lower Columbia tribes of Spanish sailors surviving wrecks and ending up among them. Ruby and Brown, The Chinook Indians, pp. 26–29.

  Starting in 1769, Franciscan Father Junípero Serra: For Serra, see Stephen W. Hackel, Junípero Serra: California’s Founding Father, esp. chaps. 8–10.

  assigned Cook a secret mission: James Zug, American Traveler: The Life and Adventures of John Ledyard, the Man Who Dreamed of Walking the World (New York: Basic Books, 2005), p. 64.

  the last major section of the earth’s continental coastline: Oxford Atlas of Exploration, p. 161.

  71 they discovered that the spectacularly lustrous sea otter furs: Ruby and Brown, The Chinook Indians, p. 37.

  “The rage with which our seamen”: Zug, American Traveler, p. 114, quoting Officer King’s official account of the voyage.

  he had become the first native-born American citizen: Zug, p. 78.

  72 Promoting with his memoir: Ibid., pp. 132–38.

  his innovative theory: Zug, pp. 186–87.

  “My friend, my brother, my Father”: John Ledyard, John Ledyard’s Journey Through Russia and Siberia, 1787–1788, ed. Stephen D. Watrous (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1966), p. 114.

  73 Ledyard’s stories opened Jefferson’s eyes: Donald Jackson, Thomas Jefferson and the Rocky Mountains (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1981), p. 56. “Ledyard . . . affected Jefferson’s thinking profoundly. . . . [H]e could also see in Ledyard a man whose dreams made sense and were not unlike Jefferson’s own dreams for American growth.”

  73 “[M]y tour round the world by Land”: Ledyard to Jefferson, St. Petersburg, March 19, 1787, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 11 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955), pp. 216–18.

  As the lone romantic adventurer struck off: Ledyard later was arrested by Russia authorities and deported. He died several years later in Cairo while making arrangements to attempt to cross the Sahara Desert.

  74 sail for the Northwest Coast: Barry M. Gough, Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 5, s.v. “John Meares.”

  Russian traders built a permanent fur post in Alaska: Ruby and Brown, The Chinook Indians, p. 78.

  finally returning home to Boston Harbor: Dorothy O. Johansen, Empire of the Columbia, 2nd ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), pp. 52–54.

  “I was sent”: John Boit, “Log of the Columbia,” ed. F. W. Howay, T. C. Elliott, and F. G. Young, Quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society 22, no. 4 (Portland: Oregon Historical Society, 1921), p. 303.

  75 became the official Euro-American discoverer: Inglis, Historical Dicitonary of the Discovery and Exploration of the Northwest Coast of America, p. 81. Bruno de Hezeta, a Spanish explorer, noted the existence of a large river in August 1775 but did not enter its mouth, although its mouth was subsequently marked on Spanish charts.

  Five months later a rival explorer: Bern Anderson, Surveyor of the Sea: The Life and Voyages of Captain George Vancouver (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1960), pp. 114–17.

  77 He prepared himself should the partners: For Thorn’s suspicions of the partners, see Irving, Astoria, pp. 93–94. Conversely, Franchère writes that the “idea of a conspiracy against him on board [was] absurd.” Franchère, Narrative, pp. 373–74.

  “My uncle was drowned here”: Ross, Adventures, p. 55.

  CHAPTER SIX

  79 on March 22, 1811: Franchère, Narrative, p. 86.

  80 “At last she hoisted the flag”: Ross, Adventures, p. 56.

  Franchère reported that when those aboard: Franchère, Narrative, p. 87.

  “an anxious night”: Ross, Adventures, p. 57.

  83 But no one aboard ship made a move to help: Ibid., pp. 59–60.

  85 spilling the crew: Franchère, Narrative, p. 91, and Ross, Adventures, p. 65.

  averages about 45 degrees: Paul S. Auerbach, M.D., ed., Wilderness Medicine: Management of Wilderness and Environmental Emergencies, 3rd ed. (St. Louis: Mosby, 1995), p. 105.

  body’s core temperature begins: Ibid., Fig. 4-4, p. 109.

  86 has lost a good part of his or her ability: Ibid., pp. 115–16.

  After four hours in water: Ibid., Fig. 4-10, p. 116.

  Modern research shows: Jack Wang et al., “Asians Have Lower Body Mass Index (BMI) but Higher Percent
Body Fat than do Whites: Comparisons of Anthropometric Measurements,” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (July 1994): 23–28.

  87 seized Weeks’s clothing in their teeth: Ross, Adventures, p. 64.

  keep working his muscles to generate body heat: Franchère, Narrative, p. 92, and Irving, Astoria, p. 83.

  Around midnight, with a rising wind: Franchère, Narrative, pp. 89–90.

  88 The following morning, March 26: Franchère and Ross disagree on the date of the Tonquin’s bar crossing. Ross places it one day later. Ross, Adventures, p. 58; Franchère, Narrative, p. 87.

  “You did it purposely”: Ross, Adventures, p. 63.

  the other Hawaiian lay down atop him: Franchère, Narrative, p. 92.

  89 “I paused for a moment”: Ross, Adventures, p. 65.

  feet bleeding, legs swollen: Franchère, Narrative, p. 96.

  90 brothers Lapensèe and Joseph Nadeau: Ibid., p. 86.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  93 dancing had lasted until midnight: Porter, John Jacob Astor, Business Man, vol. 1, pp. 66–67. Also see journal entry of Samuel Bridge, from Montreal, ibid., pp. 412–13.

  94 In essence, Astor would buy into the existing: Ronda, Astoria & Empire, p. 55.

  with china and white linen tablecloths: From personal visit to Fort William Historical Park, Ontario, Canada, July 2012. The North West Company’s Fort William has been meticulously re-created as it was circa 1815 at this site near the original Fort William on Lake Superior’s western shore.

  95 wilderness delicacies such as fatty beaver tail: Irving, Astoria, p. 24, and from inventories in the Great Hall at Fort William Historical Park.

  wintering partners voted in favor: David Lavender, The Fist in the Wilderness (1964; reprint, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998), pp. 125, 443 fn. 7, and Ronda, Astoria & Empire, p. 63.

  96 guard their own interests on the Pacific side: Ronda, Astoria & Empire, p. 64.

  97 Astor wrote to Hunt: Ibid., p. 139.

  “No establishment of the [United] States on that river or on the coast”: Ibid., p. 56.

  98 Koo-koo-Sint: Jack Nisbet, Sources of the River: Tracking David Thompson Across Western North America (Seattle: Sasquatch Books, 1994), p. 151.

  The message from the North West Company wintering partners: Ronda, Astoria & Empire, pp. 62–64. The instructions themselves from the wintering partners to Thompson do not survive.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  99 On the morning of May 26: John Bradbury, Travels in the Interior of America, in the Years 1809, 1810, and 1811, Including a Description of Upper Louisiana (London: Sherwood, Neely & Jones, 1817), pp. 77–78.

  He had been scalped: Ibid.

  101 his own hair-raising encounter the previous year: Irving, Astoria, pp. 130–31; Chittenden, The American Fur Trade of the Far West, p. 161; Bradbury, Travels in the Interior of America, p. 90.

  thirty-some members to a full sixty: Irving, Astoria, p. 131.

  “Mr. Hunt, in his eagerness to press forward”: Ross, Adventures, p. 182.

  ten-oared riverboat: Bradbury, Travels in the Interior of America, p. 11.

  102 Astor had promised Jefferson to share: Ronda, Astoria & Empire, p. 124.

  Daniel Boone: Bradbury, Travels in the Interior of America, p. 16.

  103 which he wrote down: Ibid., pp. 17–21. Bradbury reported that he had heard about Colter’s sighting of the forty-foot-long fish from William Clark, of Lewis and Clark fame, then in charge of U.S. Indian affairs for Louisiana Territory, based in St. Louis.

  104 The whoops grew fainter: For a physiological description of this phenomenon, known as EIPH, see A. J. Ghio, C. Ghio, M. Bassett, “Exercise-Induced Pulmonary Hemorrhage After Running a Marathon,” Lung 184, no. 6 (Nov.–Dec. 2006), pp. 331–33. Abstract retrieved December 14, 2013, from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17086462.

  isolated fur post on the Yellowstone River: Ibid., p. 21n; Chittenden, The American Fur Trade of the Far West, vol. 1, p. 119.

  105 commissioned by the Linnaean Society: Irving, Astoria, p. 143.

  Psoralea esculenta: Bradbury, Travels in the Interior of America, p. 21.

  Meriwether Lewis as being at least partly responsible: Ibid., p. 18n, and Irving, Astoria, pp. 146, 179.

  Several young Blackfeet tried to steal: Ambrose, Undaunted Courage, pp. 360–63.

  take all possible precautions: Irving, Astoria, p. 146.

  106 twenty-four-year-old Ramsay Crooks: Crooks was born in January 1787, in Scotland, to a shoemaker. Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 8, s.v. “Crooks, Ramsay,” http://www.biographi.ca.

  steady, even-tempered, and considered: Irving, Astoria, p. 130, and Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 8, s.v. “Crooks, Ramsay.”

  piercing, deep-set, dark eyes: Irving, Astoria, p. 138.

  Born in Baltimore to a respectable family: Ibid., p. 135.

  107 he would shoot him on sight: H. M. Brackenridge, Journal of a Voyage up the Missouri River, Performed in 1811, in Early Western Travels, vol. 6, ed. Reuben Gold Thwaites (Cleveland: Arthur H. Clark, 1904), p. 111.

  served as a Sioux interpreter: Ronda, Astoria & Empire, p. 138.

  107 she escaped into the woods along the river: Bradbury, Travels in the Interior of America, pp. 12–14, and Irving, Astoria, p. 144.

  Five-year-old Jean Baptiste: “Marie Dorion,” entry in National Women’s History Museum, http://www.nwhm.org, retrieved October 1, 2013.

  108 Sacagawea had adopted European dress and manners: Brackenridge, Journal, pp. 32–33.

  on April 21, 1811: Bradbury, Travels in the Interior of America, p. 46.

  109 voyageurs as embarrass: Ibid., p. 32, April 2, 1811.

  110 “Behind our house there is a pond”: Ibid., p. 13. Bradbury recorded that the Canadians were “measuring strokes of their oars by songs” and that there were singing calls and responses from oarsmen in bow and stern, or the steersman sang while the rest of the oarsmen provided the chorus.

  Two years earlier, in the spring of 1809: Chittenden, The American Fur Trade of the Far West, vol. 1, p. 141–44. Chittenden gives an account of Andrew Henry and Manuel Lisa’s Missouri Fur Company’s early venture at Three Forks.

  “The [Blackfeet] Indians were so intensely hostile”: Ibid., vol. 1, p. 142.

  111 let their empty canoes drift away downstream: Bradbury, Travels in the Interior of America, p. 77, entry for May 26, 1811.

  112 leave the Missouri River: Ibid., pp. 78–79, and Irving, Astoria, pp. 179–80.

  infused more with the spirit of brotherly love than mortal combat: Chittenden, The American Fur Trade of the Far West, vol. 1, p. 57 and p. 64 n2.

  Old photographs of scalping victims: See photograph of scalping survivor Robert McGee, in Library of Congress collections at http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/cph.3c05942. Other accounts of scalping survivors can be found at http://www.futilitycloset.com/2008/02/20/how-the-west-was-won.

  113 constrict the blood vessels quickly and slow the loss: Conversation with emergency physicians Dr. Doug Webber and Dr. Gary Muskett, December 2, 2011.

  114 that Hunt had received a letter from Astor: Ross, Adventures, p. 244.

  “O mon Dieu! Abattez le voile!”: Bradbury, T ravels in the Interior of America, p. 78.

  115 “Ou est le fou?”: Brackenridge, Journal, p. 102.

  1,075 miles up the Missouri: Bradbury, Travels in the Interior of America, p. 78.

  “anxious enquiry”: Ibid., p. 79.

  Hunt polled them: Irving, Astoria, p. 180.

  CHAPTER NINE

  118 The chief’s powerful Indian oratorical voice: Bradbury, Travels in the Interior of America, pp. 110–11, journal entry for June 12, 1811.

  “M’Clellan, in particular, carefully watched”: Ibid., p. 111.

  118 Arikara women bobbing down: Brackenridge, Journal, p. 112, entry for June 12, 1811.

  119 “O meu Dieu! Ou est mon couteau!”: Bradbury, Travels in the Interior of America, p. 103.

  “I had several times to st
and between”: Brackenridge, Journal, p. 107, entry for June 5, 1811.

  120 an elderly chief, or priest, climbed to the lodge’s rooftop: Bradbury, Travels in the Interior of America, p. 112. The account of the meeting with the Arikara chiefs is contained in both Bradbury and, in more condensed form, Brackenridge.

  121 “[They] were going on a long journey to the great Salt lake”: Brackenridge, Journal, p. 113.

  “This candid and frank declaration”: Brackenridge, Journal, p. 113.

  122 the Sioux had blockaded Hunt’s riverboats: Bradbury, Travels in the Interior of America, pp. 82–89, journal entry for May 31, 1811.

  123 “Smoking”: Ibid., p. 113n. The custom was explained to Bradbury by Ramsay Crooks.

  124 “No people on earth discharge the duties of hospitality”: Ibid., p. 169.

  worked out in advance: Ibid., p. 125.

  “I was wondering”: Brackenridge, Journal, p. 130, entry for June 18, 1811. Both Brackenridge, an American and a journalist, and Bradbury, who was British and a scientist, give a great deal of enthnographic information about the Arikara, although in Brackenridge’s case, it is frequently of a disapproving nature.

  a total of eighty-two horses: Wilson Price Hunt, “Voyage of Mr. Hunt and His Companions,” journal entry for July 18, 1811, in New Annals of Voyages, Geography and History, vol. 10. (Paris: J. B. Eyies and Malte-Brun, 1821), translation available at http://user.xmission.com/~drudy/mtman/html/wphunt/wphunt.html, retrieved October 2, 2013.

  125 Sacagawea was ill and wanted to return: Brackenridge, Journal, pp. 32–33. Brackenridge was also on Lisa’s riverboat, with Sacajawea and Charbonneau.

  They had left their son: Editor’s footnote in ibid., pp. 32–33, about Jean-Baptiste.

  filled their heads with horror stories: Irving, Astoria, p. 219.

  126 “[T]he grass was knee-high: Hunt, “Voyage of Mr. Hunt and His Companions,” journal entry for July 24, 1811.

  127 “honest and clean”: Ibid., journal entry for August 5, 1811.

  Hunt’s riverboats, having been sold to Lisa: Brackenridge, Journal, p. 146.

  “experience many difficulties”: Ronda, Astoria & Empire, p. 168. Gratiot is a business correspondent of Astor, from ibid., p. 50.

  129 gracious hospitality: Irving, Astoria, p. 224.