A Brief History of
Washington State
By Lottie Roeder Roth
From "History of Whatcom county, Volume 1
Published 1926
Transcribed by Marla Snow
It was almost a century after the discovery of America by Columbus in 1492, that the first visit of a white man to the shores of Puget Sound was recorded, and after these first discoveries, two more centuries elapsed before active explorations of the coast were made and this great region became known to the world as more than a mythical land and a mythical sea on the way to a still more mythical Northwest passage.
The world was busy, but it was busy with other things. The Spaniard, used to his sunny clime, found the southland much more congenial than the colder north. The Pacific ocean was discovered, but the arms of Spain turned southward to the bloody conquest of the Incas, in a land of gold. The West Indies became Spanish provinces; Mexico was over-run and had grown old under Spanish rule, and Spanish civilization had crept over the mountains into Texas and New Mexico and Arizona and southern California before it was thought worth while to explore the regions of the North.
The English meanwhile had found plenty to interest them in the nearer shores of America, along the north Atlantic. Explorations were made, the colonies were planted and grew into thirteen rebellious states, the United States of America went through the labors of birth and was added to the family of nations as heir apparent of Liberty and of future greatness, but the shores of the northern Pacific remained unknown and unsought.
The French had come, and gone. The great empire of New France, although claiming all north from the Atlantic to the farthest sea, had made no effort to make good its claim or to extend its civilization beyond the Great Lakes and the headwaters of the Mississippi, and of this French civilization, which flourished for more than a century on American soil, and which at one time threatened to control the entire continent, not a trace is to be found along the Pacific slope.
George Washington, for whom the fair state is named, lived and died and won immortal fame, and, pioneer and explorer though he was, it is more than probable that he knew of the existence of this region in but the vaguest way and that he gave to it no thought at all. In point of fairness, this or some other Pacific state should have been named "Jefferson," for he was the first American statesman who appreciated its worth or strove to gain and hold it for the great Republic. Thus for three centuries, while Shakespeare wrote and Milton sang, while the peoples of Europe fought the great battles of arms and of the mind from which grew our "modern civilization," while France and America were in the throes of revolution, while empires rose and fell, this great region remained a wilderness; the giant forest towered, unmolested, to the sky; the bear, the cougar and the deer roamed almost at will and the gentle waters of the Sound were unbroken save by the ripples of the Indian canoe.
The very Sound, with its safe and sheltered harbors, seems in those days to have withdrawn this region from the path of commerce and civilization, as if some mighty god of conservation had purposely withheld these mighty resources and these fertile acres until in the great plan of the universe they should be needed.
Washington is, then, almost the newest of the new lands-the farthest West-not in geography alone, but in all the romance and riches which the words have grown to mean.
But such was the heritage of Washington, in science, in government, in learning and in skill, that while the days must have seemed long and full of hardships to the individual pioneer, compared with other commonwealths Washington appears to have had no infancy, but to have sprung full-grown, robust, and virile from the womb of the past.
Mariners and adventurers of seven civilized nations divided the honors of exploration and discovery along the shores of the North Pacific Coast, nearly all this path finding activity taking place during the last quarter of the eighteenth century. They were Spain, England, United States, Austria, France, Portugal and Holland. Prior to that period there had been other alleged discovery voyages, but few of them left indisputable records. In brief these voyages were:
1579. Sir Francis Drake (English) claimed to have reached latitude 48, about the latitude of Everett, off the coast of what is now the state of Washington, but found the weather so bitterly cold (in June) that he hastened south, or was driven by the winds, to latitude 38, where he landed and named the land New Albion.
1592. While visiting in Naples in 1596, Michael Lok, a distinguished Englishman, obtained and recorded an interview with an old Greek mariner, known as Juan de Fuca, but who gave Lok the name Apostolos Valerianos, who claimed to have sailed north along the coast for the Viceroy of Mexico, and to have entered a broad sea inlet between the 47th and 48th parallels of latitude. This inlet was later named the strait of Juan de Fuca, although no confirmation of the existence of the old man or the truth of his alleged story has ever been discovered.
Captain Barclay (also written Berkely), commanding the Imperial Eagle, sailing from Ostend, Belgium, under the flag of the Austrian East India Company, has the first direct historic record of the discovery of the strait of Juan de Fuca, which he accomplished in July, 1787, at which time he left Nootka, after a month's stay there, and sailed southward into the mouth of the strait. In the following year, Captain John Meares, an Englishman whose expedition together with Captain William Douglas sailed under the flag of Portugal, in the ships Felice Adventurer and Iphigenia Nubiana, from China to the Pacific Northwest, 1788 and 1789, sailed into and noted the mouth of the large strait, on Sunday, June 29, 1788. Remembering Michael Lok's story of old Apostolos Valerianos, which Meares evidently credited, he named the big inlet Juan de Fuca; "named for its original discoverer," he wrote in his voluminous journal, in which, however, he neglects to mention Captain Barclay's specifically noted discovery of the strait nearly a year before Meares' visit, and of which Meares was definitely and fully informed. Meares sailed across the strait, anchoring at the south shore, probably Neah Bay, where he records a friendly meeting with Chief Tatootche of the Makah tribe, whose name Meares conferred upon one of the larger islands at the mouth of the strait.
1774 (August). Spanish ship Santiago, Captain Juan Perez, from Monterey, Mexico, cruising off coast, saw and named the highest peak in the Olympic mountains Santa Rosalia (now Mount Olympus), which was the first name recorded for the region now known as Washington.
1778. Captain James Cook (English) on his third voyage, sighted and named Cape Flattery, where his ship was driven to sea by storm.
1775. Captain Bruno Heceta, commanding the ship Santiago, and Bodega y Quadra, commanding the schooner Sonora, sailing from San Blas, Mexico, landed a party on shore at 47 degrees, 30 minutes, July 14, erected a cross and planted a bottle of records. This is the first historic landing of white men on Washington soil.
1787. Captain Barclay (also written Berkely), English master of Austrian East India Company's ship, Imperial Eagle, discovered the Hoh River, naming it Destruction River. His wife, who accompanied him, was the first civilized woman coming to the Pacific Northwest.
1790. Lieutenant Alferez Manuel Quimper in the ship Princesa Real (Princess Royal), captured from Captain Colnett (British), May 31 began exploration and survey of Fuca strait and named Canal de Haro in honor of his pilot, Gonzalo Lopez de Haro, Captain Robert Gray of the American ship Columbia and schooner Lady Washington having already partly explored the strait, in the summer of 1789, with the Lady Washington. The Spanish took possession of and fortified Neah Bay, naming it Nunez Gaona, but abandoned it before completing the establishment. Quimper, Cuadra, Caamano and Fidalgo were the chief Spanish explorers at this time.
1791. In March, Quimper surveyed the southern channels of the Gulf of Georgia and named Rosario strait and the gulf Gran Canal de Nuestra Senora del Rosaio la Marinera, which Captain Francisco Elisa confirmed.
Elisa also, 1791, named many islands, including San Juan, Fidalgo, Guemes, Lopez, Caamano, and Tejada, and the bay of Puerto de los Angeles. he discovered the Cascade mountains and named the range Sierra Antonio, and Mount Baker was christened Montana del Carmelo. San Juan archipelago was named Isla y Archipelago de San Juan.
1792. Captain Francisco Elisa, commander of Mexican Viceroy Revilla Gigedo's expedition, on the ship Concepcion, with the sloop San Carlos (Lieut. Salvado Fidalgo) and the Princesa Real (the captured Princess Royal) commanded by Alferez Manuel Quimper, supported by 100 soldiers and artillery, explored from 1790 till late 1792. In 1791, Elisa named the large bay Seno de Gaston, now Bellingham Bay, and the channel entering the bay, between Cypress and Guemes islands, he named Canal de Guemes, now Bellingham channel. June 11, 1792, Captain George Vancouver sent Joseph Whidbey in a yawl to explore and survey this region, and upon receiving his report June 22, named and charted Bellingham Bay, without mentioning in whose honor.
Captain Vancouver, whose geographic nomenclature indicates that he chose names of men with whom or under whom he served, or having direct connection with his expedition, is assumed to have named the bay in honor of Sir William Bellingham, who was controller of the British navy storekeeper's accounts, and who personally checked over Vancouver's supplies as the expedition prepared to sail from England, April 1, 1791.
1792. Near the entrance of Fuca strait Vancouver met and conversed with Captain Gray of the American ship Columbia, who told him of having unsuccessfully tried to enter the mouth of a large river (the Columbia), but Vancouver noted in his journal that the report was improbable. June 21, Vancouver met and conversed with Captain Galiano of the Spanish schooner Sutil y Mexicana, who was surveying the strait of Juan de Fuca; they exchanged notes, but Vancouver declined to accept Galiano's notes as correct. Galiano completed survey of the strait over the course of the schooner Lady Washington in 1789, and also cruised around Vancouver island, proving it an island.
Captain Vancouver's expedition equipment included the Discovery, with 100 men and mounting 20 guns; the Chatham, 45 men and 10 guns. The officers were: Captain George Vancouver, Lieuts. Peter Puget, Joseph Baker, Menzies and Johnstone, on the Discovery, with Lieut. W. R. Broughton in commend of the Chatham.
1792. Peter Puget explored and surveyed the southern region of Puget Sound, while Captain Vancouver and Lieut. Broughton, in the Discovery and Chatham, cruised and charted farther north. During the same time the Spanish surveying expedition under Galiano, on the Sutil y Mexicana, also surveyed, named and charted the northern Puget Sound and Gulf of Georgia region.
Of the naming of Mount Baker, Vancouver makes this entry in his journal, April 30, 1792: "The high distant land formed, as already observed, like detached islands, amongst which the lofty mountain, discovered in the afternoon by the third lieutenant (Joseph Baker), and in compliment to him called Mount Baker, rose a very conspicuous object."
Chuckanut Bay, so named by Captain Henry Roeder (1853) appears on the Spanish charts of Elisa and Galiano (1791-2) as Puerto del Socorro.
1792. The Spanish charts of the Bellingham Bay country, products of the ship Sutil y Mexicana expedition, were not published till several years later. Vancouver's charts, in the preparation of which the commander exercised the greatest skill and care, were forwarded and published as soon as possible. This accounts in a measure for the establishment and popularity of his nomenclature. The Sutil y Mexicana survey of Bellingham Bay immediately followed that of Vancouver (Whidbey) and an effort was made to restore the Elisa name, Seno de Gaston, 1791, modified into Bahia de Gaston. The United States Coast Geodetic survey of 1853 charts the northern part of the bay as Gaston Bay, and the David Thompson survey, Northwest Company, calls it Ballsom Bay.
From May 7 till June 22, 1792, Vancouver's expedition cruised and surveyed with a yawl, a launch and a cutter, and for some time in July the English and Spanish parties were together in their work, and exchanged notes. Elisa had named Lopez island, a name which Vancouver allowed to remain. The Wilkes expedition, 1841, charted Lopez as Chauncey's island, in honor of Captain Isaac Chauncey, an American naval hero, but the U. S. Coast Geodetic Survey (1853) restored the name to Lopez.
The Galiano and Valdes Spanish charts of 1792 show the large bay north of Lummi island as Ensenada de Locra, and Lummi island as Isla de Pacheco, the last being part of the name of the then viceroy of Mexico. The Wilkes expedition of 1841 charted the island as McLoughlin's island, in honor of Dr. John McLoughlin, Hudson's Bay Company chief factor for Oregon. The United States Coast Geodetic, 1853, named the island Lummi, "because inhabited by that tribe."
June 4, 1792, Captain Vancouver formally proclaimed possession of the Puget Sound basin, naming it New Georgia for his king, George III. In the same month, June 22, upon receiving Shipmaster Joseph Whidbey's survey report, the commander named Bellingham Bay, Point William and Point Francis, all of which names have survived, except New Georgia, though that compliment persists in the name of the Gulf of Georgia.
Captain Francisco Elisa, Spanish, in 1791, named the reefy small islands north of Orcas island Isla de Sucia, a word meaning unclean, or nautically, foul waters or shores. Wilkes, 1841, charted them as the Percival Group, in honor of Captain John Percival of the United States Navy, but the Spanish name remains.
June 12, 1792, Vancouver and Galiano and Valdes, ship Sutil y Mexicana, met at Birch Bay, Gulf of Georgia, a few miles south from Blaine, where Vancouver anchored and sent out exploring and survey parties in small boats. George Davidson, in the book Pacific Coast Pilot, records the Indian name of this bay as Tsan-wuch. The Spaniards had already charted the bay as Ensenada de Garzon, but Vancouver named it Birch Bay, on account of many black birch trees "which grew in such abundance that it obtained the name of Birch Bay," he explains in his record.
The long sand spit, partly inclosing Drayton Harbor bay, Blaine, was named Semiahmoo, the name of a once numerous tribe of Indians resident there, but now extinct. Drayton Harbor was named by Commander Charles Wilkes, United States Navy, 1841, in honor of his ship's artist, Joseph Drayton.
Late in 1791 the mouth of the Fraser River was discovered and charted by the Spaniard, Captain Alejandro Malaspina, who explored this region with the frigates, Discubierta and Atravida (Captain Bustamenti), and named the big stream Rio Blanca, in honor of the Spanish minister of state. Malaspina, upon meeting Vancouver, immediately after the latter's Puget Sound work, at Nootka, informed the English captain of the discovery, but Vancouver declined to credit the statement, just as he had dismissed Captain Robert Gray's report of the discovery of the Columbia River. Vancouver could not think it possible that he would fail to observe these large streams while he sailed past them and within viewable distance from their mouths.
As early as 1783, Thomas Jefferson, prophetic American statesman and pioneer president of the young republic, had in mind the exploration and settlement of the great West beyond the Mississippi, for in that year, December 4, 1783, he wrote a letter to George Rogers Clark of Ohio, in which he stated that a large sum had been subscribed in England for the exploration of the country west of the Mississippi to California in pretense of promoting knowledge, but, Jefferson guessed, for colonization, and he asked if Clark would be willing to lead an exploring expedition, if money could be raised for that purpose.
Twenty years later, William Clark, a younger brother of George Rogers Clark, shared with Meriwether Lewis the hardships and historic honor of materializing that earlier dream in the famous Lewis and Clark overland expedition of 1804-5-6. They continued their journey and explorations on down to the mouth of the Columbia River, near which they built a stockaded blockhouse and headquarters on the banks of a small stream now called Lewis and Clark River. This was occupied by the expedition and called Fort Clatsop (the name of a neighboring friendly tribe of Indians) until March 23, 1806, when the expedition broke camp for the homeward journey.
Captain Robert Gray's discovery and exploration of the Columbia River and tributaries, in 1792; the Lewis and Clark exploration expedition in 1804, 1805, and 1806, and finally the actual establishment and American settlement of John Jacob Astor's more enduring and permanent enterprise at Astoria, mouth of the Columbia River, in 1811, formed the three most vital links in the American claim to the broad region then known as the Oregon country, and which embraced what is now known as the states of Oregon, Washington and Idaho. Astor sent two elaborate expeditions to found Astoria, one sailing around Cape Horn in the ill-fated Tonquin, which landed first at the mouth of the river, established settlement and built a fort, while the second party came by land from Montreal, via St. Louis, over the Rocky and Cascade mountains, experiencing almost unendurable hardships en route, but eventually reaching their destination, though almost in an exhausted condition.
Prior to these epic explorations, however, American maritime trading vessels had already established trading familiarity with known ports of the Pacific Northwest, and as early as 1801 thirteen American trading vessels, the majority from Boston, were regularly conducting trade with the original inhabitants.
During the War of 1812, November 30, Captain William Black of the British sloop of war Raccoon, twenty-six guns, just after the Pacific Fur Co. had sold its Astoria establishment to the Northwest Company, Canada, anchored at Astoria, and on December 12 took formal possession for the British crown. The treaty of 1818 restored the historic town, whose name had been changed to Fort George, to the United States, Captain J. Biddle of the American commission receiving possession for the United States August 9, 1818, he being in command of the American sloop of war Ontario. This re-possession was later more formally confirmed jointly by Captain J. Hickey of the British frigate Blossom, Commissioner J. B. Prevost of the Unites States and J. Keith of the Northwest Company, October 6, 1818, the establishment remaining in the control of the English company.
In 1825 the Hudson's Bay Co. established a central trading post at what is now known as Vancouver, Washington, across the river from the Oregon metropolis, Portland. It was called Fort Vancouver, situated a little more than 100 miles up the river from Astoria, and continued supreme there and in the tributary territory of the Oregon River until the treaty of 1846 finally determined American sovereignty over all territory south of the forty-ninth parallel of latitude, except that the treaty specified a diversion southwestward from the western continental terminus of the forty-ninth parallel along the center of the main channel separating Vancouver island from the mainland and the center of the strait of Juan de Fuca. The British interpreted this as indicating Rosario strait, the Americans maintained the De Haro strait was the separating channel, thus giving the many islands of the San Juan archipelago to the United States. Emperor William I of Germany, as arbitrator, decided in favor of the claims of the United States in 1872.
To Rev. Jason Lee, pioneer Methodist missionary of great courage and resourcefulness, and Marcus Whitman, who soon followed him as missionary of the Congregational church organization, are largely due the credit for initiating the permanent settlement of the Oregon country, Lee in the Willamette and Columbia River valleys, and Whitman in establishing his original colony of 1838 in the vicinity of the present city of Walla Walla. To these should be added Captain Nathaniel J. Wyeth of Cambridge, Massachusetts, who in 1831 headed a major settlement and exploration expedition to the Oregon country, and of whose party eleven members reached Fort Vancouver on October 29, 1832.
Invariably, as the new American people arrived on the Columbia, they were hospitably received by the then governor for the Hudson's Bay co., Dr. John McLoughlin, but were uniformly advised to settle south of the Columbia River, as the country north of there would remain British-advice which, as later actions demonstrated, was little heeded by the Yankees, for, after the signing of the historic forty-ninth parallel treaty of June 15, 1846, the American settlers were able to organize the new territory of Oregon, created by act of Congress, approved August 14, 1848, at which time Abraham Lincoln declined an offer of appointment as governor of the new Far West territory.
General Joseph Lane, Mexican war veteran, became the pioneer governor, arriving at Oregon City, March 3, 1849, when he immediately issued a proclamation placing the new government in actual operation. Meantime the permanent settlement of what is now Washington state progressed rapidly, especially in the Olympia region, but the demands of these settlers were little understood and scantily recognized by the Oregon territorial legislature. This brought about much dissatisfaction, and ultimately territorial division, and the territory of Washington, embracing what is now the state of Washington, was created by act of Congress approved March 2, 1853, and Isaac I. Stevens became the first territorial governor.
At the time of the separation of Oregon and Washington, all the territory now embraced in the state of Washington was organized into eight vast counties all of whose names are still retained in the present state-Lewis, Clarke, Pacific, Thurston, Jefferson, Pierce, King and Island counties, and these with what is now known as Eastern Washington formed the provisional government of the baby territory of Washington in 1853.