PACIFIC SALMON FISHERIES 



429 



111 18.33 Captain Wyoth returned overland to Boston, while the 

 rest of his party dis])ers(Ml throu<2;hout the (V)liinihia Valley. Far 

 from disheartened by the disaster to his vessel, (/aj)tain Wyeth dis- 

 patched the hrioj May Dacre, Captain Lambert, laden with trading 

 goods and supplies, to the Columbia River via Cape Horn, while he 

 crossed overland with 200 men. He established a salmon fishery and 

 fort at the lower end of Wappatoo (now Sauvies) Island, at the 

 mouth of the Willamette River. 



The salmon fishery did not prove successful and the brig sailed in 

 1835 with only a half cargo of fish and did not come back. The same 

 year Captain Wyeth broke up both the establishment here and on 

 the Lewis River and, disheartened, returned to Massachusetts, having 

 found the competition of the Hudson Bay Co. too powerful for him. 



In August, 1840, Capt. John H. Couch, in command of the brig 

 Maryland, which belonged to Cushing & Co., of Newburyport, Mass., 

 arrived in the Columbia River. After taking a few salmon the vessel 

 left in the autumn, never to return. On April 2, 1842, Captain Couch 

 reappeared in the river with a new vessel, the Chenamus, named 

 after the chief of the Chinooks. With his cargo of goods he estab- 

 lished himself at the present site of Oregon City, the first American 

 trading house to be established in the Willamette Valley. He also 

 established a small fishery on the Columbia River. The vessel 

 returned to Newburyport in the autumn. 



The next American vessel to come in established a far from enviable 

 record. There is no record of her name, but she was commanded by 

 a man named Chapman and entered the river April 10, 1842. She 

 came for the purpose of trading and fishing and remained till autumn. 

 During her presence in the river it is charged she sold liquor to the 

 Clatsop and other savages, as a result of which much bloodshed and 

 discord resulted. 



About 1857 John West began salting salmon in barrels at Westport, 

 on the lower Columbia. 



In February, 1859, the Washington Legislature passed an act pro- 

 hibiting nonresidents from taking fish on the beach of the Columbia 

 between Point Ellis and Cape Hancock. 



Bancroft '^ states: 



On the 26th of January, 1861, J. T. Lovelace and W. H. Dillon were granted the 

 exclusive right to fish in the Columbia for a distance of 1 mile along its banks and 

 extending from low-water mark half a mile toward the middle of the stream. 



In 1861 H. N. Rice and Jotham Reed began packing salted salmon 

 in barrels at Oak Point, 60 miles below Portland. The first season's 

 pack amounted to 600 barrels. The venture proved fairly profitable 

 and was soon participated in by others. 



In the spring of 1866 William Hume, who had assisted in starting 

 the first salmon cannery in the United States on the Sacramento 

 River in 1864, finding the run of fish in the latter stream rather dis- 

 appointing, started a cannery for Hapgood, Hume & Co. on the 

 Columbia at Eagle Clift", Wash., about 40 miles above Astoria. 



The year this first cannery operated the following fishermen w^ere 

 operating in the river: Jotham Reed used a trap and a small gill 

 net opposite Oak Point; Mr. Wallace fished a small seine from the 

 shore of an island of that name a short distance below; John T. M. 

 Harrington (who was later to establish the Pillar Rock cannery), in 



■' History of the Pacific States, Washington, Idaho, and Montana, 1845-1889, vol. 26, p. 349. By Hubert 

 Howe Bancroft. 



