Maternal great-great-great grandmother & her family

SOLOMON HOWARD SMITH. - Mr. Smith, a most generous and public-spirited citizen, and a pioneer of so early a day as 1832, was born at Lebanon, New Hampshire, December 26, 1809. He came of Revolutionary stock, his maternal grandfather having been a soldier in the war for Independence, and a relative of the Greeley family. His father was an assistant surgeon in the war of 1812, and died at Plattsburgh, New York, in 1813.
The boy Solomon was afforded good advantages, receiving his academic education at Norwich, Vermont; and he studied medicine with his uncle, Doctor Haven Foster, not, however, taking a diploma. In 1831, with a number of other adventurous spirits, he went fishing for cod on the Newfoundland banks, and met with good fortune, except that upon the return the schooner was run over by an English packet ship and sunk with cargo and all. Smith and the others were picked up and left at Boston bankrupt, as they were staking their fortune upon the sale of their fish, which they shared alike. At the city in which he found himself, Smith obtained employment as clerk, but in 1832 was moved to cast in his fortune with Captain Wyeth, and build up a great business upon the Pacific coast.

The severe journey across the plains and mountains he endured as well as the best, bidding adieu to one after another of the scions of the first Boston families who were in the party, as they turned back, meeting with William Sublette at the rendezvous on Green river, at Pierre's Hole. On the trip from that point to the Columbia, this side of the Salmon River Mountains, he endured seven days' fasting, eating nothing but the buds, or pome, of roses. Being at the head of one of the little parties into which Wyeth had divided his company he descried, on coming out of the mountains, an Indian tent with smoke in the distance, and making his way thither at the top of his horse's speed discovered upon arrival that the Indian had but shortly returned from the hunt, - a buffalo lying at the side of the tent; while the heart of the animal was boiling in the pot over the fire. To his eloquent gestures indicating his hunger, the Indian replied by immediately tendering the whole morsel; and the feast was royal and just completed as the other members of the party arrived. Their hunger was soon relieved, however, by recourse to the buffalo.

Reaching Vancouver, Mr. Smith soon found employment to succeed Mr. Ball as teacher of the school at the fort, filling out the term of which but two weeks had been taught, and following the first with a second term. The year following he married Celiast (see biography of Mrs. Helen Smith), and went to Gervais, making a settlement and teaching school at Chemawa. Afterwards he went to the mouth of the Chehalem creek, and assisted Ewing Young to build a mill, and made that point his home until 1840. Suffering, however, from ague, and hearing his wife tell of the excellent climate at her old home by the ocean, and conferring with McLoughlin, who advised the making of settlements only in communities large enough for protection, he with Daniel Lee went down the river in May, 1840, meeting at the mouth of the Columbia the ship Lausanne, with the reinforcements for the Methodist Mission. In August of the same year he made a removal to Clatsop, advising the missionaries also to establish a station there. From that time he made his home upon the beautiful Clatsop Plains.

He became the real agricultural pioneer of Clatsop county, as the fort of Astoria was simply for purposes of trade. In his capacity of pioneer he was the first to bring horses in the spring of 1841 to the mouth of the river, making a ferry-boat by means of two canoes lashed side by side. The horses were Spanish animals obtained from the place of Ewing Young and were put aboard the craft at St. Helens. With Mr. Frost he went to the Willamette valley and brought cattle via the Grande Ronde, Salmon river and Tillamook, and made subsequent trips. He opened out a farm, and, upon the great revival of business and trade consequent upon the opening of the gold mines in 1848, sold butter and beef to great profit, getting two dollars per pound for the former. He also had supplied beef to the wrecked crew of the Peacock in 1841, and for the Shark in 1846.

In 1849 he opened a store at Skipanon, Oregon, doing a large business and at one time carrying a stock worth twelve thousand dollars. In 1851 he went into the lumber business, leasing the old Harrall mill on the Lewis and Clarke river, and operating it successfully. From 1852 onwards he confined himself more strictly to conducting his farm. From the earliest years he was a friend of good order and progress. He was especially interested in schools, and with the few settlers in that region kept a teacher at a salary of twelve hundred dollars a year. He held school offices constantly, and in 1874 was chosen by the people of the counties of Clatsop, Columbia and Tillamook as senator to the state legislature. It was while serving in that office that he died, in August, 1876. Sol H. Smith will always be remembered as a pioneer of great enterprise and generosity, opening out a new country and extending every possible assistance to those who came after him.

He had a family of seven children, three of whom



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570 HISTORY OF PACIFIC NORTHWEST - OREGON AND WASHINGTON.
are living: Silas Smith, born in Chehalem valley September 22, 1839, was brought up with his father, and at the age of majority went East to study law, reading with W.N. Blair, a county solicitor, and a cousin of Senator Blair of New Hampshire. Mr. Smith is a thorough lawyer and a very effective speaker, a man indeed of much culture and broad ideas. He resides upon the old place of his father near Skipanon. His wife, Mary H., daughter of Deacon G.W. Swain, of Laconia, New Hampshire, is a lady of culture and attractive social qualities. They have five children. Mrs. Josephine Ketchum, Sol Smith's elder daughter, resides in San Luis Obispo county, California; Mrs. Charlotte Braillier, the younger, resides near Skipanon.

MRS. HELEN SMITH. - There survives within the limits of the old Oregon no person whose life possesses more universal interest than the lady whose name appears above, and of whom we present an excellent portrait. The widow of a pioneer whose first operations upon this coast belong to the antique days of Wyeth and Kelly, her own memory extends to the remote times of the Astor expedition of 1811; and her infant life was contemporary with the explorations of Lewis and Clarke in 1805. The entire panorama of the occupation and settlement of our state has therefore passed before her eyes. She has been no careless observer of these great events; and her mind, still clear and active, retains a surprisingly vivid recollection of our early Oregon history. As thus pictured in her mind, this possesses a peculiar interest from the fact that it has been drawn exclusively from personal observation from the standpoint of the native owners of our state.

Celiast, whose christian name is Helen, is the daughter of Coboway (incorrectly written Commowool by Bancroft), and dates her birth in the year 1804. Her father was the chief of the Clatsops, a tribe whose boundaries extended from the mouth of the Columbia river southward to Ecahni Mountain (Carni), eastward thence to Swallalahost or Saddle Mountain, and thence by Young's river back to the Columbia. The Clatsops were a quite and peaceable people, having the same language as the more numerous tribe of the Chinooks. They were possessed of many arts and accomplishments, which, although of a different order from our own, betrayed no less the inventive genius and predominance of the human mind. Their houses, often sixty feet in length, and made of split cedar planks sometimes twenty feet long and three feet wide, the canoes hollowed from cedar trees by means of chisels and mallets, and steamed and strained to a greater width by means of a fire kindled in the hollow after the process of chipping out was nearly completed; the salmon seines made of wild flax threaded and twisted into chords; and lastly the clothing made of the skins of wild animals and of frizzled cedar bark, with elaborate ornamentations of shells, pebbles, quills, feathers, and later of beads, - were all specimens of industry, and o f ingenuity which would tax the skill and patience of the European. For some years before the birth of Celiast, the Clatsop Indians had carried on a trade with the passing ships fro strap and scrap iron, of which they made their chisels and knives and for beads. The traders of Astoria still later supplied them with cloths, and to some extend with firearms.

Coboway, chief of this people, held his title as did the chiefs of the most of the native races, - by virtue of his intelligence and activity. He was a faithful and honest man, of much service to Lewis and Clarke, and was intrusted by them with the certificate announcing their arrival and wintering at the mouth of the Columbia; and this document, as by request the chief delivered to the captain of the first vessel entering the harbor. Among other duties of the Indian chief was the delivering of the stories, legends and beliefs of the tribe to his successors; and from her father the young Indian girl learned all the myths of Ecahni, Tallapus and Old Thunder with the faiths and maxims of the tribe delivered as they were in rhythmic language with vivid narratives. From the regular and clearly carved features, the lofty brow and large expressive eyes of this now venerable woman of more than eighty years, we may suppose that in her youth she was of unusual beauty. Soon after reaching womanhood, in accordance with the custom of the Hudson's Bay Company, she was sought and married by one of the employés of the organization, a Frenchman by the name of Porier, the baker at Fort George or Astoria. She bore him three children, and in the removal to Vancouver in 1824 accompanied him thither.

It was during her residence at the latter point that there occurred an event which must have been exceedingly distressing to her feelings. This was the bombardment of the Indian village at Tansy Point by a British schooner. The sanguinary affair was brought about as a result of the wreck of the bark William and Ann at the Columbia bar, and a difficulty in obtaining the wreckage. This was one of the few occasions upon which McLoughlin showed severity; and his course has been justified on the ground that the Indians had murdered the crews of the vessel. This charge has, however, ever been earnestly denied by the remnants of the Clatsop Indians; and it seems hardly just to let it stand without their protest and explanation. By their account, and indeed by all authentic records, the William and Ann, in company with the American schooner Convoy, Captain Thompson, sought to enter the river late in the day, in the month of February or early in March (the month of smelt). The schooner was in the lead, and passed safely into Baker's Bay; but the bark missed the channel and struck on the middle sands, holding fast. A boat from the schooner, as appears from the accounts of a sailor of the Convoy, attempted to go to the relief of the unfortunate crew; but the wind rising brought them into peril, and compelled them to return without reaching the bark. During the night the William and Ann went to pieces; and, as the Indians said, the crew were drowned. The Convoy went up the river bearing the tidings; and in due time a boat party came from Vancouver to investigate the wreck. They found no trace of the crew; but much of the cargo was in possession of the Indians. among other effects of the ship was a boat with the oars,



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SKETCHES. 571
found in the hands of a sub-chief of the Clatsops. This Indian declared that he found it floating in Young Bay. He moreover incited the others, and confirmed them in their intention to retain the wreckage which they had gathered, all but one of the Indians refusing to give up any of the property. Upon pressure and threats from the English, the saucy chief produced a small, decrepit, bail dipper, and said that he would send it (with his respects) to the chief factor. This ultimatum carried back to Vancouver brought as a response an armed schooner, which shelled the village, and from which an assault was made; and the recalcitrant chief, with two of his men, was killed. The village was also ransacked for the lost goods, and generally pillaged. The bombardment, which occurred, not upon the loss of the crew, but two months later upon the refusal of the Indians to give up the plunder, seems to have had an adequate cause, not in the belief of the English that the crew had been murdered, but that it was dangerous to allow any Indians to hold their old view that they might call their own anything that they found or that came from the ocean; but that the property of the English was everywhere sacred, and must be given up on demand.

Some years after the removal of Celiast to Vancouver, it was discovered by McLoughlin that her husband, Porier, had another wife in Canada; and upon the chief factor's advice she left the Frenchman, retaining only the youngest of her three children, which she also relinquished a few years later. She took up her residence with her sister, Mrs. Gervais, at French Prairie, but was frequently at the fort. There she was first seen by Solomon Smith, and sought by him as a wife. In the absence of any civil or ecclesiastical authority, ceremony was dispensed with; but in conscience they were bound, and a few years alter were formally joined by the missionary Jason Lee. They now spent some years at Chemawa, and later at the mouth of Chehalem creek; but in 1840 Celiast, or Helen, was rejoiced to guide the canoe of her husband, which also conveyed Daniel lee and a crew of Wasco Indians, to the scenes of her old home at the mouth of the Columbia river. This excursion was made in May. In August following a regular removal was effected thither; and after a short stop at the mouth of a romantic little stream, the Neacoxa, by the ocean beach, a permanent home was formed at the north end of Clatsop Plains, on a farm embracing some of the finest grass land of that region famous for herbage. There Mrs. Smith has lived for just under about half a century, conducting her household in an exemplary and capable manner. Since the death of her husband, she has kept a cottage of her own, apart from the other members of her family but upon the old homestead.

In the early years of the settlement on the plains, she rendered the Whites many important services. Once as the whole band of Clatsops, augmented by the Tillamooks, were on the way to massacre the family of a man at whom they were enraged, she met them while in full array, and by cogent arguments, directed both to their caution and to their nobility, turned them back from their bloody purpose. Her influence over them was remarkable; and it is probable that, if she had not used it at that very moment in the interest of the white settler, a local and perhaps a general Indian war would have ensued. At another time, she saved the life of that worthy gentleman, Mr. Frost, by seizing by the hair the Indian Katata, and wrenching from his hand the gun with which he was about to shoot the missionary. Once more she wrenched from the hand of her husband the gun-stock with which he was about to brain an Indian who was making upon him a murderous attack, but whose arm was already paralyzed by one blow of the weapon. Mr. Smith was ever glad to have been prevented from killing the fellow, as he proved after his punishment to be a faithful friend.

These incidents illustrate the courageous and noble nature of Mrs. Smith, and the careful study of her portrait impresses one with the benevolence and integrity of her character. Although now an octogenarian, she is still in good health; and her mind is not impaired by age. She must not be omitted from among the number of those who have made our state, since her services, whether as wife and mother in a new settlement, as a pioneer of one of the oldest of our counties, or in bidding a hundred excited Indians to leave the settlers unharmed, have been of the highest value.