DOMINIS-GOSPODNETICH

DOMINIS-GOSPODNETICH

Adam S. Eterovich

VOLUME XXVIII JUNE, 1927

NUMBER 2

NEW ENGLAND AND THE OPENING OF THE

COLUMBIA RIVER SALMON TRADE, 1830

By SAMUEL ELIOT MORISON

Professor of History, Harvard University

An old letter-book of a Boston fur-trading family, preserves the story of the first commercial shipment of salmon from the Columbia River to the eastern part of the United States.

Chief George Mennenick informed the members of the Columbia River Historical Expedition at Wishram, on July 20, 1926, that since time immemorial smoked salmon had been an article of commerce between the Yakima Indians and the tribes of the interior. All the early white explorers of the Columbia noted its abundance of fine salmon, and those from New England, at least, where salt fish was a staple commodity, must have speculated how they could turn Columbia River salmon to account. Doubtless many if not all the Yankee shipmasters who visited the Coast had a few barrels of salmon salted down for the use of their crews on the return voyage. In the annals of the Hudson's Bay Company we find frequent reference to the use of pickled (i. e. salted) Salmon as a winter food supply for the company's servants at the Columbia and Fraser rivers; and the possibility of building up an export trade was discussed. In October, 1828, for instance, Governor Simpson writes the master of one of the Company's ships that he can supply "salted salmon of such quality as the cask already shipped, at 4d sterling per pound, so as to yield a moderate profit, and for 6d per pound we would undertake to supply two to three hundred barrels of 300 lb. each annually."' The governor writes Dr. McLoughlin on July 10, 1830: "If you find that a good market can be obtained for any considerable quantity of salmon we would provide the necessary means in coopers, fishermen, nets, etc., to prosecute that branch of business; but I could not learn in England that it was an article much in demand on the shores of the Pacific. You can however obtain certain information on this subject in the Sandwich Islands, and we shall be regulated by such as you may furnish us.

At that moment a Yankee shipmaster and his crew were preparing on the banks of the Columbia, the first salmon shipment destined to the Atlantic Coast. It was the by-product of a fur-trading voyage to the Northwest Coast by Josiah Marshall's brig Owhyhee, Captain John Dominis. Owner, vessel and master were veterans. Josiah Marshall was one of the old Northwest traders of Boston, the brig Owhyhee had been trading to the Columbia since 1820, and Captain Dominis-a seaman apparently of Italian origin-had worked up to a master's commission from the forecastle of Josiah Marshall's vessels. Possibly like other

seamen he had wives in many ports; but at least one of them was at Hawaii. Their son John C. Dominis became the "shiek" of the Sandwich Islands, and married the Hawaiian princess who afterwards became Queen Liliuokalani. In July, 1828, Josiah Marshall dispatched from Boston the brigs Owhyhee, Captain Dominis, and Convoy, Captain Thompson, both laden with an assorted cargo for the Northwest Coast and South Sea Island trade. Captain Thompson vividly describes his voyage in a letter written after the worst of it was over, from Tahiti, where he was not very successful in doing business with the natives. His gingham was "not dashy enough for them," and his carts and wagons were in slight demand for lack of roads and motive power. The picture of Captain Thompson borrowing one of the few horses on the island, and demonstrating a wagon on the beach, suggests that in a later generation he might have been a successful automobile salesman. But as the natives saw small chance of acquiring a horse, they refused to purchase a wagon.

Wheeled vehicles, one may add parenthetically, had been an important export line from Boston to Hawaii since 1820. In 1824 Josiah Marshall sent out a covered coach as a gift to King Kamehameha 11, on his ship Parthian. As soon as the news got ashore at Honolulu, all the queens and their ladies in waiting came swimming out to the vessel, and insisted on the coach being landed and assembled forthwith. The queens, too impatient for horses to be hitched up, ordered some of the admiring natives to grasp the pole, and had a trial trip under man-power. "This is a new era," writes Captain Dixey Wildes on March 12, 1824. "1 have had a long ride in company with the queens in our coach.

Of all things that have been brought to this country none have pleased them as much." The Marshalls' business at the Islands picked up immediately; and as a symbol of the triumph of Yankee over British influence, the Hawaiian royal family sent Mr. and Mrs. Marshall a gigantic basin and pitcher of Royal Worcester ware, which a British trader had sent them.

The Owhyhee, the larger vessel, arrived first at the Columbia River, February 14, 1829. Captain Dominis describes how he narrowly escaped shipwreck on the bar, being becalmed within half a mile of it, and a heavy swell setting him toward the breakers. Eighteen days later, the Convoy got across without trouble, although on the same day the Hudson's Bay Company brig Isabella was wrecked there, and all hands lost.

Dr. McLoughlin of Fort Vancouver was not pleased to see Captain Dominis, and the displeasure was mutual. Each believed that there was not enough trade to go around. McLoughlin tried to buy Dominis out, and pay him in lumber but the Yankee refused to do business unless the Scot would pay in furs or sterling exchange. Marshall's instructions were to "make a stand" on the river-to establish a temporary station; but Dominis wrote that such a plan would require forty or fifty men, which was more than his little expedition could spare. Accordingly he decided to station one vessel in the Columbia and cruise with the other so he informed Marshall in a letter which was taken across the continent by the famous Jedediah Smith, and reached Boston exactly one year after, it was written.

Leaving the Convoy at the Columbia to collect furs, Captain Dominis proceeded northward to parts of the coast with which he had long been familiar, and both did so well that they ran short of trading goods. The Convoy therefore visited Hawaii in order to stock up, and incidentally to sell the vehicles that were so little appreciated by the unsophisticated natives of Tahiti. Captain Dominis must have had some good reason-possibly devotion to his employer's interests, perhaps to someone else-for not visiting his wife and family at Hawaii.

Both vessels spent the winter of 1829-30 on the Columbia, and it was probably in the spring of 1830 that they purchased fresh salmon from the Indians and cured them Yankee-fashion for the Boston market. From Dr. McLoughlin we learn that the Owhyhee made her last departure from the Columbia River on July 29, 1830, "After giving us an immensity of trouble." "Since her departure," he wrote in October, "we have been obliged to keep our parties running to Indians as much as ever to prevent their having any number of skins in the event of any coaster coming here."

In the summer both vessels made another cruise along the Coast, the Convoy calling at San Francisco to load horses for the Hawaiian Islands, where the two vessels made rendezvous in November. Instead of proceeding to China, Captain Dominis left his Canton market furs at Honolulu for sale, in charge of Marshall's agent, keeping London market furs such as beaver, for sale at Boston. The Convoy was also left at the Islands for sale. Captain Dominis, after enjoying (we hope) for a month the company of his wife and the future prince consort, sailed in the Owhyhee about November 19, 1830, and after trading at the Society Islands, arrived at Boston on April 15, 1831, after almost three years' absence.

It was on this voyage that Captain Dominis brought his fifty-three barrels of Columbia River salmon to Boston. The chance of profit would naturally have occurred to a Yankee shipmaster, for pickled salmon had been a common article of New England diet since the Colonial period, and the Boston customs records show that a good deal of it was being imported from Newfoundland in the 1830's. We may further infer that Captain Dominis must have originally intended this shipment for the Boston market, or he would have left it at Honolulu for sale to whalers. The Owhyhee also brought from Tahiti about forty dollars' worth of arrowroot, and from Hawaii a hogshead of sperm oil. On arrival, the customs officials at Boston proposed to assess a duty on these articles as from a foreign country. Josiah Marshall protested as to the salmon, and David Henshaw, the deserving Democrat who was then collector of the port, referred to Washington for instructions. President Jackson's comptroller of the treasury replied that since the salmon were caught by the natives in a part of the Columbia which was "not claimed as a part of the territory of the United States," they must "be considered as foreign-caught fish." It is perhaps fortunate that no official of the British government obtained a copy of this letter. Actually the Treasury Department had considered "The Northwest Coast of America" as a foreign country since 1791, and continued to do so almost as long as the Oregon 4uestion remained unsettled.

We are fortunate to learn of the fate of Captain Dominis' venture from the letter-book of William H. Bordman, Jr., a rival of Josiah Marshall in the northwest lur trade. The salmon sold at $14.00 a barrel, wholesale, but proved of indifferent quality, and difficult to work off at retail. Possibly they had not been fresh enough when salted, or the proximity of sperm oil and beaver skins in the Ohwyhee's hold, did not improve their flavor. Yet that very autumn the brig Sultana left Boston for the Columbia with a thousand empty salmon barrels, and in 1834 Nathaniel J. Wyeth made the salmon fishery one of the principal objects of his Oregon expedition. He had hard luck in the fishing season of 1835, and sent home only half a cargo of salted salmon. Four years later, according to a stray newspaper item "A fine brig is now in Newburyport (Mass.) ready for sea, bound on a salmon voyage to the Columbia River. She is owned by Capt. J. N. Cushing and several enterprising young men who go out in her."

We may, then conclude that the Owhyhee's cargo was not an isolated and insignificant venture, but the beginning of a trade in salted salmon between the Columbia River and the Eastern United States; and we may safely name Captain John Dominis the pioneer in a business that under changing methods and means of transportation has grown steadily in volume and in value.