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Fort Boise was originally built by the Hudson’s Bay Company out of Canada. It was built by a man named Thomas McKay in response to Fort Hall, the American trading post built by Nathaniel Wyeth. The forts were a couple hundred miles apart on the Snake. Eventually, Hudson’s Bay would own both. As the fur trade declined, they were eventually used as supply posts for the thousands of Americans migrating west on the Oregon Trail.
“Twenty dollars for a cut of flour?” Molly gasped at the high prices.
“They have to freight it in from Oregon City,” Erin mentioned in return.
“We can do without then,” she responded, furious at how they were taking advantage of the settlers coming through with their greed.
“I was approached to settle here,” Erin told her. They were looking for farmers such as herself that had stock, and the offer had been quite good.
“Tempted?” Molly worried. They were all tired of traveling, and she could see some of the settlers might be tempted.
“No, I want to see Oregon. I crave seeing it,” she admitted. “Besides, the area seems quite barren.” She had also seen that the water on the river was quite deep. It wasn’t fast, but it flooded every year. “I don’t want to be removing silt from my fields,” she teased, as though she had ever been tempted.
Molly smiled. Although they were running out of supplies, and she knew a couple of the settlers were down to the bare minimum, she wouldn’t settle here, and she knew Erin wanted to see the promised land.
They were headed northwest now. In a few days, they would cross into Oregon, and there seemed to be a renewed vigor in the settlers at this news, an excitement they couldn’t curtail. They would need that added energy as they faced the Blue Mountains in Oregon. For many years, it was thought impassable, that is until travelers and mountain men cut and cleared a trail through the heavy timber.
“This is my kind of country,” Mr. Robinson told them all as he admired the rich forest surrounding them on the trail. He was heard arguing with his wife about the advisability of settling out here where no one else was living. In the end, he decided to continue with the relative safety of the wagon train.
Erin kept her excitement to a minimum despite being in the Oregon Territory.
“I don’t like what I’m hearing about the Columbia River,” Erin admitted in a conversation to Molly.
“Yes, I heard some discussing it. One of the first wagon trains had to disassemble their wagons and float down that river.”
“That must have been something to see. I heard it’s very treacherous.”
“Surely, they couldn’t have taken their stock and their horses on rafts?”
“No, they had someone herd them over a trail I think they called the Lolo trail to get around a mountain. It’s so high it has snow year-round.” She thought for a moment to try and gather her thoughts. “I think they called it Mount Hood. Yeah, that’s the name. They said the trail is rough around that mountain, and some say it’s an old volcano.”
The children, listening avidly, perked up at this part of the tale, but they knew better than to interrupt when their pa and ma were discussing such things.
“Is that the Barlow Road I heard them discussing?” Molly asked.
Erin nodded, confirming what they had both heard. As they traveled though, she began to feel that she didn’t want to go all the way to Fort Vancouver, which was the end of the trail for them all. The Willamette Valley sounded beautiful, exactly what they were looking for, but something was drawing her away from there and she didn’t know what. She just knew she didn’t want to do what everyone else was doing.
“Here is some of the elk we got earlier today,” one of the men brought by a roast for the Herriot family.
“Thank you so much,” Molly said gratefully, immediately cleaning the meat and cutting it up. It would make a fine meal and take many hours to cook in their Dutch oven.
“Breakfast?” Erin murmured, not wishing to be overheard. They’d already eaten dinner. She knew many would take a chunk of meat like that and put it over the open flames, but they both preferred to bake the meat in the oven. They felt it tended to taste better too. It also provided them with leftovers that they could have for their noon meal or even dinner tomorrow.
Molly nodded.
One by one, the children began to sicken, coming down first with coughs that led to congestion and a little fever and aches. Worried that it would spread, families kept their children away from those who were sick. Whatever it was, it spread through their wagon train until the adults had it too. Still, they traveled on, attempting to keep to their schedule and get twelve to twenty miles in per day despite many being sick. If they made less than ten, it made many of them irritable. Some considered going on without those who were slowing them down, but Wallace wouldn’t hear of it.
“Instead of one day, we’re gonna take two days here for everyone to rest up,” he told them, worrying about snow in the mountains ahead of them but not letting on about that to the unknowing settlers. He’d exchanged words and heard enough opinions from his lieutenants and the mountain men helping them.
The time off just gave whatever sickness they were hatching time to percolate among them and really get settled in. The sweating and chills, the fevers and the aches, would all take time to work through everyone’s system. Those well enough to take care of the others were run ragged. The resulting debris from each family was thrown aside or buried and eventually leached out into the local streams. Other wagon trains coming along this route would have to deal with dysentery and disease from these leavings. A seemingly innocent drink of water could cause the whole cycle to start again.
“We ain’t heading up to Walla Walla,” one of the mountain men was telling a settler who had inquired.
Erin loved hearing the odd-sounding names. Sometimes they had Indian names, other times British names since the trappers had been all through here. Now, it was becoming American, and the names reflected that as well. As they meandered their way northwest and came near a river called the Umatilla, they stopped for the night near a settlement. Someday, a town called Pendleton would be established here, but that was some years in the distant future. Several of the settlers were approached by others who wished them to settle in the area. Most were diehard believers in the Willamette Valley and the promises of their intended destination but were sick of traveling.
“We’re establishing sheep and cattle ranchers as well as farmers in this area,” one of the town folk was arguing, trying to get some to change their mind about traveling on.
Erin, after having watched and worried over their children as they came down with the sickness that affected everyone, had a touch of it herself. Seeing Molly brought low from the sickness, she made a decision that would affect them all the rest of their lives. “We aren’t going on,” she told Wallace.
“You agreed to go to–” he began, but she interrupted, holding up a hand to stop him from speaking.
“I agreed for you to lead us to Oregon. It would be foolish to go those miles only to turn around and head back here. I like seeing the mountains in the distance, a day or two’s ride away from these valleys, and they say there’s good farmland here.” She could see it with her own eyes; no one had to tell her. “My wife is sick and I ain’t...aren’t...am not gonna make her go any farther. We are leaving the wagon train,” she told him firmly. Molly had tried to argue with her but was too weak to make too much of a fuss.
Wallace hadn’t realized how much he had depended on men such as Herriot. His dogs had been invaluable, and he had even offered up one his pigs when they needed fresh meat. Although he could force the man to live up to the contract he had signed with him, he wouldn’t. The technicality of taking him to Oregon had thrown him. He had agreed to that. “Well, Herriot, you will be missed,” he answered instead of getting angry. He held out his hand to shake. Erin entrusted him with a letter to the bank in Oregon City where half her money had been sent when she sold the farm in Ohio. She instructed them to send it to her here in the village where she could pick it up. Although Wallace had no idea what was in the letter, he agreed to deliver it himself.
Erin was grateful, and word soon spread that the Herriot family was staying in the area. People came to wish them well. Some also considered staying. Others thought they were foolish to give up good land in the Willamette Valley. They managed to sell a couple of the kittens before the train left. Other settlers in the area found out they had kittens and bought a couple too.
Erin separated Billy and her other cattle from the herd. She rode back and forth, herding them away, so they wouldn’t join in as the train members started heading the rest of the herd farther west. She left King and the now pregnant Queenie guarding their small herd, the sheep still in their fold for now.
“Pa, are we going to be alone here?” Theo asked, watching as the friends he had made on the train left them behind.
“No, we’ll meet others,” she assured him, watching the train thoughtfully, waving at the few who had taken the time to get to know them.
“I’m sorry you had to make this decision,” Molly apologized, feeling guilty but too damn weak to do anything about it. She was relieved they wouldn’t have to travel any farther with the train.
Erin smiled at her and shook her head. “No, I was ready to make the decision. Going farther hasn’t been what I wanted for a while. I was tempted back at Fort Boise, but I wasn’t ready until we passed through those mountains.” Her chin pointed east towards the mountains they had just traveled through. They looked ominous in the distance, and she wondered how much time they had until winter settled in this area. “If you can manage the camp, I’ll ride around and look for some land for us. What do you want in a place?”
They had talked endlessly about what they would want when they got to Oregon. It had started way back in Ohio, and now that they were here and faced with the decision, it was difficult to really think about what they wanted. They wanted it all.
Erin looked at the fine farmland, the rolling hills, the endless grazing for the animals, and she felt at home. It was just a matter of finding what she wanted for their family.
“Pa, can I go with you?” Theo asked.
“Me too?” Tabitha asked.
“Me too?” Tommy asked, all three speaking at the same time.
Erin smiled affectionately. Theresa was too sick to ask yet and Timmy was too involved with the remaining kittens to understand the conversation. She looked at the recuperating Molly with that smile. “Nope, I need to do this alone. I may be gone a couple days, so I’m taking King with me, but I’ll leave Queenie with you all. I expect you to mind your ma and take care of her for me while I’m gone.”
Protests, arguments, and admonishments followed, not only from her wife. The children felt they had some right to help make the decision where they would live, but Erin vetoed all the protests. She wished Molly could go with her, but she simply wasn’t up to it.
“I trust you,” Molly said, and Erin was grateful for the vote of support.
“I’ll be happy to show you around the area,” one of the townsfolk told her, but she insisted on asking the farmers that came into the town where they were settled and what was the best area in their opinion. She got a lot of feedback that way.
“There’s more land south along these here mountains. You don’t have to stay near town,” someone told her.
A guide showed her along the winding paths, through the hills south of what would someday be Pendleton. After traveling a couple days, they came to a little town by the name of Sweetwater. It was not much more than a couple of houses and a store. Erin, worried about leaving Molly and the children for too long, was ready to head back. She had seen many areas with her guide but nothing that told her she was home. Heading east with the intention of getting closer to the mountains, she came over a hill and looked at a pretty, remote valley. Realizing the stream through it would provide plenty of water, seeing the trees on the hillsides and bluffs, and noting the way the land lay, she realized she was home. Astonished, she was looking at the prettiest place with the best view she could possibly imagine. There was land for plowing, trees for building, and when she rode farther out, she found a lake. She couldn’t believe it could possibly be theirs and thought she was dreaming.
“They is enacting the Organic Laws of Oregon,” she was told when she inquired back in Sweetwater.
“What is that?” was the natural question. She hadn’t heard of it.
The Organic Laws of Oregon were drafted by settlers in the Willamette Valley and extended to other areas across Oregon. It organized land claims in the various counties.
“You say you is married?” the man she was talking to asked.
“Yes, my family is camped up yonder,” her chin pointed to the north.
“That’s good. Married couples are granted up to six hundred and forty acres, a whole section or a square mile.”
“How much that gonna cost me?” she asked, knowing that a lot of their money had been taken up with the cost of getting to Oregon, and they also needed something to survive on. They had the money they had sent on from the bank, but Lord knew how long that would take to get here now that they were settling. She figured land out here had to be as expensive as back east...and then, she was proven wrong....
“It’s a grant. It don’ cost you nothin’. All ya gotta do is work and improve the land.”
Erin thought that too good to be true, but she was game. Getting the coordinates of how far they were from Sweetwater and other information on their location from the helpful ‘neighbors’ in that tiny town, she headed back to Pendleton to file her claim. While giving up the pertinent details of the land she had seen and explaining where it was located, she worried lest someone else had already filed a claim on that same land. She’d rode all around it, the stallion effortlessly eating up the miles as she looked the land over. She felt it was God’s providence guiding her to their land, and she was pleased when they took her claim paperwork and processed it. Apparently, not many settlers had made claims in that area...yet.
Finding Molly up and about and worried since she had been gone far too long, she uttered one sentence that instantly changed her aggrieved mood, “I found it.”