Blue Highways: Vancouver, Washington

Unfolding the Map

Vancouver, Washington lies across the Columbia River from Portland, Oregon.  William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) indicates that, at least in the early 1980s, Vancouver hadn't kept up with Portland.  This leads me to reflect on the plight of unappreciated sister cities that lie near better regarded metropolises.  To see just how close (or far, depending on your perspective) Vancouver lies from Portland, click here for the map.

Book Quote

"I headed for Vancouver, Washington, once the Hudson's Bay Company's major outpost in the Northwest with lines of commerce reaching to Russian Alaska and Spanish California. In spite of a headstart, the old town had not been able to keep up with the new settlement across the river that got named by a coin toss."

Blue Highways: Part 6, Chapter 7

Downtown Vancouver, Washington. Photo by Piyo at Wikimedia Commons. Click on photo to go to host page.

Vancouver, Washington

How many cities have little brother or sister cities that get the short end of the stick, like Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington?  How many of them are often positioned to be great cities, and by an accident of fate get relegated to second status?  How many of them were just doomed to be overshadowed regardless?

I hadn't really thought of this phenomena until I lived in Milwaukee and learned a bit about its history.  Milwaukee has been considered to be a little sister to the great city of Chicago to its south.  However, in the early lives of both cities, fate could have reversed making Milwaukee the greater of the two.  A number of factors may have contributed to the preeminence of Chicago over Milwaukee, including the loss of most of Milwaukee's Irish political leaders in the Lady Elgin shipwreck disaster.  However that may have happened, Milwaukee, sitting 90 minutes north of Chicago, is often overshadowed.

The Bay Area, south of where I grew up and where I went to school, has similar dynamics.  There are three large cities on the San Francisco Bay: San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose.  In terms of population, San Jose is the biggest of the three.  However, San Francisco has always been considered the preeminent city of the region.  It even overshadows Sacramento, just two hours north and bigger than San Francisco.  Part of this is due to San Francisco's colorful history, culture and traditions.  However, how frustrating it must be for the other cities to have their thunder stolen.  Oakland achieves a level of parity with its own MLB baseball, NBA basketball and NFL football teams, Sacramento has an NBA basketball franchise, and San Jose has an NHL hockey franchise.  But, San Francisco still reigns supreme in the public consciousness.

And so on around the United States.  St. Louis and East St. Louis, New York City and the cities of New Jersey across the river.  I even saw a little bit of this in Canada, when I went to the Kitchener-Waterloo area.  The combined area has almost 500,000 people, but it is overshadowed by Toronto to its east.  Sometimes you'll see a neighbor city achieve some parity, as for instance one goes to the Tampa-St. Petersburg area.  But mostly, when such combinations occur, one city takes the more noted position.

I even note this in the state where I currently reside, New Mexico.  Albuquerque is the largest city in the state with a population of 450,000 or so people.  It has a number of attractions within it which make for a great and varied lifestyle.  Albuquerque has some great theater including a world class theater festival (Revolutions International Theater Festival) each year, some good music and an amazing yearly global music festival (Globalquerque).  Albuquerque has accomplished artists.  It has good restaurants, and the Sandia Mountain Wilderness bumps up against it.  Yet Albuquerque is frequently overshadowed in public estimation, except by people who live there, by Santa Fe, the state capital, 70 miles north.  Santa Fe is smaller, and has a reputation as an arts city. Santa Fe is also very much more expensive than Albuquerque.  Yet most people, when they come to vacation in New Mexico, fly into Albuquerque, rent a car, and pass through the city on the interstate to get to Santa Fe without staying to see what Albuquerque has to offer.  So, Albuquerque is permanently seen as a lesser place, even though it is not.

So these types of dynamics that lead to a Portland preeminence, Vancouver second-class status are interesting.  I often go to Tampa-St. Petersburg because my wife's parents live in Sarasota.  While Tampa is the flash and glitz of the big city, I think that I prefer St. Petersburg with its quieter streets, interesting bars and restaurants, and more sedate lifestyle.  I love San Francisco, but a visit to the East Bay yields its own rewards.  Milwaukee was a perfect city size to live in, with a lot of wonderful things despite other problems.  People who can't afford or don't want to afford New York live in New Jersey and live fine lives.  So, I imagine that even though, as LHM says, Vancouver hadn't kept up with Portland (and remember, this was 30 years ago...I've seen writing that Vancouver has been revitalized), it has its own attractions and its own enticements.  And, at the very least, such places exist to prop up the preeminent city's ego while giving the lesser cities something to complain about next door.

Oh, one other thing.  LHM mentions the city that was named by a coin toss.  He is speaking of Portland, which was named by a coin toss between two of its founders.  One founder wanted to name it after his home city of Portland, Maine, while the other wanted to name it after his home city of Boston, Massachussetts.  I guess it's obvious who won.  Vancouver, by the way, was named in honor of sea captain George Vancouver (as was Vancouver, British Columbia), and was an early outpost of the Hudson's Bay Company, a British and then Canadian fur trading conglomerate that today is the oldest corporation in North America.

Musical Interlude

When it comes to sisterly relationships, it doesn't matter if they are humans or cities.  One gets all the attention, the other seethes.  One tortures smaller sister, the other plans older sister's demise.  Rarely do they get along famously - but it happens.  This is captured in the love-hate feelings that Juliana Hatfield put into her song My Sister.

If you want to know more about Vancouver

City of Vancouver: All About Vancouver
The Columbian (newspaper)
Fort Vancouver National Historic Site
Visit Vancouver USA
Washington State University, Vancouver
Wikipedia: Vancouver

Next up:  Camas, Washington

Blue Highways: Portland, Oregon

Unfolding the Map

Lots of stuff in this post.  We rarely get to visit a big city with William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) because he tries to avoid them.  No avoiding Portland, however.  We'll look at some of the nefarious history of shanghaiing in Portland's past, and relate it to human trafficking today.  There are, count 'em, two musical interludes in this post.  What a deal!  Here's the map to see where Portland sits in the scheme of our journey!

Book Quote

"The river road came off the hills into the industrial bottoms of Portland and left no way but through the city; once committed to it, I went looking for oysters downtown in the area where drinking (Erickson's Saloon formerly had a bar running nearly eight hundred feet), whoring and shanghiing sailors were the main after-dark endeavors a century ago.  It was here that five-foot-tall Bunco Kelly kidnapped, by his own count, a thousand lubbers through his standard method of knockout drops, although his easiest haul was eight tramps he found drinking formaldehyde in an undertaker's basement; Kelly gathered them up and got them aboard ship by passing the dying men off as intoxicated."

Blue Highways: Part 6, Chapter 6

Downtown Portland with Mount Hood in background. Photo by David Wieprecht of the US Geological Survey. Click on photo to go to host page.Portland, Oregon Part 1

The description of Portland's Bunco Kelly, in LHM's quote above, led me to do a little bit of thinking.  We currently live in a world where, despite the fact that every country has officially outlawed slavery (the last country to do so was Mauritania as recently as 2007, though the practice remains there), the world has more slaves than at any other time in its history. The estimates range from 12 million to 27 million people living in conditions of slavery, a shocking statistic considering that we live in what is considered a modern and humane world.

In Bunco Kelly's time, slavery had been abolished in the United States for at least 20 years when he started his practice.  And to be fair, his trade in trafficking of humans was not considered slavery, though that might be a quibble.  Shanghaiing was officially known as impressment, and it had been used in official capacity by the British Royal Navy up until the defeat of Napoleon.  Impressment was the forcible recruitment of sailors, and was justified by the king's right to call out people for military service during a time of need.  For Britain, which had extensive holdings overseas, pretty much any time could qualify as a time of need.  Impressment agents would find men, usually those who were considered vagrants, and impress them aboard Navy ships.  Sometimes, individual Navy ships, plying the high seas and in need of personnel, would impress sailors and other men aboard ships that they stopped.  The result was the same regardless - the new sailors were obligated to serve a time aboard the ship and were penalized if they deserted their posts and were caught, frequently by flogging.

While the Royal Navy discontinued impressment after the Napoleonic Wars, the practice continued.  In various American ports a labor shortage of qualified seamen led American merchant ships to adopt shanghaiing, which was essentially the same practice.  However, instead of relying on the government and military agents to provide sailors, ships' captains relied on ruthless and unscrupulous characters called crimps.  These men would find ne'er-do-wells, usually in places like Portland's Skid Road or other such places in other American port cities, and then use various means including drugging them to bring them aboard ships.  Upon bringing the men aboard, the crimps would receive a fee per head after "signing them in" usually by forging a signature.  A successful crimp could make over $9000 a year, which averages out to over a quarter million dollars a year at today's prices.  Once the men were aboard, they could not leave the ship under threat of imprisonment until their time of duty was finished.  On board, ships operated like the company store in mining communities - the sailors were indebted to the captain for their clothes, food and other necessities, which were subtracted in advance from their pay.

Of course, it being an unscrupulous business, the crimps themselves were often unscrupulous.  LHM's quote relates how one of the most infamous shanghaiers, Bunco Kelly, was not above collecting his fee for dead men.  Kelly, whose legitimate occupation was as an hotelier, prowled the streets at night and brought in hundreds of men and women over the course of his dubious career.  Once he found a number of men who, thinking that they had broken into the basement of a bar, drank formaldehyde in the basement of a mortuary and were dying.  Kelly sold the men to captain, telling him that they were drunk and got $52 per head for them.  Imagine the captain's surprise when out at sea he tried to awaken dead men.  Kelly also once sold a dime-store carved Indian to a captain, getting $50 by wrapping him up and passing him off as unconscious.

Musical Interlude One

Here's a Jack White and Loretta Lynn song about Portland.  I usually don't do two musical interludes, but I'm getting into some heavy stuff in Part 2 and I don't want to give the wrong impression about Portland, which I hear is a fantastic place to live and work.

Downtown Portland at night. Photo at the Cassie and Dallin blog. Click on photo to go to host page.Portland, Oregon Part 2

What really stands out to me is the connection between shanghaiing, which the United States fully outlawed by 1915, and modern day techniques to traffick humans, especially women and children, into slavery.  Modern slavery is made up of women and girls often sold into prostitution.  Women can be literally "shanghaiied" by slavers who might use a drug like Rohypnol - the "date rape" drug - to sedate the women who then wake up in a nightmare scenario where they are forced to provide services to men for the profit of their captors and kept by various ways in bondage.  We often think of this as being a crime that is perpetrated in developing countries, but in fact human trafficking is present in developing and developed countries.  Europe and the United States both have problems in human trafficking - the United States in 2010 listed itself on the State Department's Report on Trafficking of Persons for the first time ever.  In the major cities, on the streets, the girls and women that you see along the routes favored by prostitutes are rarely ever in the business for themselves, but are at the mercy of pimps who force them to work day after day.  While legalized brothels in the United States and Europe may employ women who choose prostitution as a trade, many brothels, both regulated and unregulated, might have women that have been trafficked and forced into prostitution.  Many women from Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia are forced into prostitution each year with promises of good jobs and money in Europe and America, only to find themselves expected to work off the debt of their passage through prostitution with the penalty of physical harm if they refuse to cooperate.

Since the beginning of the human race, people have found profit in buying and selling other humans for their various uses.  It has been called by what it is (slavery) and called other names to take some of the stigma away (indentured servitude, impressment, etc.).  Some places now considered wonderful places to live, like Portland, had these types of activities in their past.  A decade into the 21st century, the world has outlawed most forms of slavery, but paradoxically the world has the highest number of people in slavery conditions ever.  We still have slavery happening in the United States, which fought a civil war partly over whether all humans had the rights of freedom and liberty.  Humanity must now take the next step, and not just outlaw trade in humans, but eradicate the trade in humans that still exists despite all the best laws.

Musical Interlude Two

There are a couple of good songs about human trafficking in today's world.  I found this one with music by Crash Parallel called Rain Delays to be very meaningful.  If you want to see another that is also very meaningful and good, see She: A Song About Sex Trafficking.

If you want to know more about Portland

Concordia University
El.com: Portland
Food Carts Portland
Lewis and Clark College
The Oregonian (newspaper)
Portland's Best Food and Drink Blogs
Portland Food and Drink
Portland Oregon Magazine
Portland Mercury (alternative newspaper)
Portland State University
The Portland Tribune (newspaper)
Portlanders.com: 75 Best Portland Blogs of 2011
Reed College
Travel Portland
University of Portland
Wikipedia: Portland

Next up: Vancouver, Washington

Blue Highways: St. Helens, Oregon

Unfolding the Map

William Least Heat-Moon stops momentarily in St. Helens, Oregon and asks people to name the mountains that overlook their town in the months before Mount St. Helens erupts.  While they all agree on Mount Hood, they can't get the others right.  I'm sure that changed when St. Helens blew its top.  If you want to locate St. Helens, Oregon, here's the map.

Book Quote

"St. Helens, Oregon, high above the river, was remarkable that day for splendidly clear views of the white summits of four great volcanoes: Rainier, St. Helens, and Adams northward across the river in Washington, and Mount Hood southeast in Oregon.  Each has its distinction:  Hood is the most notable American mountain named after an enemy military leader...; Mount Rainier, even after blasting away two thousand feet of summit, is still the highest volcano in the country; Mount St. Helens...youngest of the peaks, was quiet again but perking....And there's Mount Adams; poor Adams, second in height only to Rainier. ....it remains the greatest unknown American mountain....

"To citizens of St. Helens, the names were insignificant anyway.  I asked three people to confirm which mountain was which; while all agreed on the location of Hood, they argued over the peaks in Washington.  To live so uninformed before such grandeur is the hallmark of a true native son."

Blue Highways: Part 6, Chapter 5

View in St. Helens, Oregon. Photo by Mary Pellegrini at the Oregon Bed and Breakfast Guild site. Click on photo to go to host page. St. Helens, Oregon

I've already focused on volcanoes in two previous posts in this Oregon series of quotes.  But it's hard to get through a post without a nod to Mount St. Helens, which on May 18, 1980 produced the most catastrophic volcanic eruption in United States history.  The eruption sheered 1300 feet from the volcano's height, sent a billowing plume of ash up to 16 miles high that eventually reached as far as Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and sent massive mud and debris flows down river and stream valleys.  57 people were killed.

LHM doesn't mention the eruption but does mention that St. Helens was "quiet again but perking."  I take that to mean that when he went through, the eruption hadn't happened yet.  If he may have seen steam coming from the top of the mountain, then he had to go through sometime between March 27th, 1980 and the May 18th eruption.

While Mount St. Helens, located in Washington but clearly visible from St. Helens, Oregon, is the youngest of the volcanoes in the region as LHM mentions, there are three others in that general vicinity that he also writes about.  Of the three others, Mount Ranier is considered one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world.  It is on the "Decade" volcano listing because of the extreme danger it poses to a highly populated area (Seattle and Tacoma), especially since it has the characteristics for an explosive eruption like Mount St. Helens.  Oregon's Mount Hood has a 3-7 percent chance of erupting in the next 30 years, but is not considered to be a candidate for an explosive eruption like Mount St. Helens.  Mount Adams has showed very minor activity recently, and is considered dormant and not likely to erupt soon.

With all of these volcanoes on their very doorstep, I find it amusing that when LHM drove through, the residents he spoke to could only really identify hood out of the four volcanoes that they see every day, disagreeing on the rest.  I suppose that the eruption of Mount St. Helens meant that for a few years, at least, they were able to also identify that peak pretty quickly.  LHM's statement that living "so uninformed before such grandeur is the the hallmark of a true native son," is funny to me because I see it all the time.

Here's an example.  When I was growing up, a botanical garden was established in my hometown.  We never paid attention to it.  Occasionally when I mentioned it to my mother, she would dismiss it.  After all, we had the coast and could see practically all of it.  Why would we want to visit a place where we would have to pay when we could see it all for free?  Yet occasionally, after I moved away, I would meet someone who had visited my hometown, and would gush over the botanical gardens.  What an amazing place, they would say, as if I knew and had been there.  Of course I hadn't, and they were astounded that I'd never visited.  Of course, a few people in the town had been very dedicated to building it and making it such an attraction, but most of the town saw it as an attraction for tourists only.  It was only in the past 5 -10 years or so, with my mom firmly in her 70s, that I got her to visit.  And the place is beautiful.  It brings all of the flora that I would never be able to see in one day, week or even lifetime into a pleasant experience that could last me a morning or an afternoon.  My sister, who had never been, now goes regularly to meet with a friend and to enjoy all of the plants.

Another example from my experience.  North of my town was terra incognita to me and still is.  It is called "The Lost Coast" for a reason.  There are very few residents and a lot of rugged but beautiful territory.  My family rarely ventured north for anything.  Maybe, just maybe, we would go up to a small village about 15 miles north, but that was it.  A few years ago, my mom suggested that my wife and I visit a winery up there with her.  We took a picnic lunch and did some wine tasting at this lovely winery situated on the bluffs overlooking the Pacific.  Thinking that this was a new business, I asked the person pouring when the winery had opened, and was astounded to find out it had been open ten years.  My wife smacked me on the shoulder and said "you mean this has been here for ten years, since you first started bringing me here, and we've never been?"  I could only shrug.  We just didn't go north, ever.

There are exceptions to this rule, of course.  Many people know everything about their towns or cities or areas and are happily willing to tell you.  But many times I find that locals are oddly resistant to exploring their own areas.  My wife and I, adventurous souls, are often subject to comments about how much we explore in the city where we now live.  We have been to events and places that locals don't seem to know about or have never tried.  I find that kind of amazing, sometimes a little sad, and mostly amusing.  It bothers me sometimes that people are so uninterested in many of the things that make their towns, cities or areas special, but it's their choice, I guess.  When you live someplace, you have the right to take it for granted, even as others gush over it.

I think, however, should I visit St. Helens someday in the future, that I would love the vista.  The mighty Columbia River flowing right past the town, the four mountains visible in the distance.  That spectacular view would engage me because it's different.  Maybe if I lived there awhile, the view might become everyday and commonplace.  But I'd try not to let that happen.  Every so often, in this city where I now live, I make myself look out toward the mesa, toward the small dormant volcanoes at the top, or east toward the large mountain at the city's edge, and I make sure I appreciate it even for a small moment.

Musical Interlude

One famous resident of Spirit Lake, in the shadow of Mount Saint Helens, was a man named Harry Truman.  Truman refused to evacuate, saying that he had lived on the mountain and that he would die on the mountain if need be.  Truman did die when mud, water and ash overwhelmed Spirit Lake on May 18th, 1980.  A song was written about him by the band Headgear on their album Flight Cases, immortalizing the feisty man who died in the place he loved.

If you want to know more about St. Helens

All-Oregon.com: St. Helens
City of St. Helens
The Columbia River: St. Helens
Port of St. Helens
St. Helens Chronicle (newspaper)
Wikipedia: St. Helens

Next up: Portland, Oregon

Blue Highways: Astoria, Oregon

Unfolding the Map

We pass through Astoria, at the mouth of the Columbia River's titanic meeting with the sea, and think about that enormous river and the use of smallpox as early American biological warfare.  How does Oregon fit with that?  Read on, dear Littourati, read on.  Go to the map to locate Astoria, Oregon.

Book Quote

"The great sea reach of the Columbia ranges in width from about three miles to ten miles and was bridged just recently at Astoria.  When it comes to fall and force, no other American river can match this one; near its mouth, sudden whirlings of water will suck logs under only to spit them forty feet into the air....

"Astoria, the oldest city on the river and now an industrial center, began as a trading post established by John Jacob Astor's fur traders.  Soon after the founding, Indians gathered to annihilate the white men; one of Astor's partners, a devious man named Duncan McDougal, thought to save the company by threatening to uncork a black vial that he said held smallpox; the tribes quickly agreed to peace and Astoria survived...."

Blue Highways: Part 6, Chapter 5

Sunset between Astoria, Oregon and Washington State. Photo by Gene Daniels and hosted at Wikimedia Commons. Click on photo to go to host site.

Astoria, Oregon

A long time ago, traveling up Interstate 5 to Vancouver, Canada I passed over the Columbia River.  I was fifteen, and more concerned about getting my chance to drive on the freeway with my learner's permit (I never got that chance).  So what I'm saying is that I passed over this landmark without really noting it in my memory.  That was unfortunate.

Having lived along the Mississippi when I dwelt for a time in New Orleans, I have some experience of strong and powerful rivers.  The Mississippi, where it reaches New Orleans and slams up against the levees in a 90 degree turn at Algiers Point, is packing so much power behind it that it is actually higher on one side than the other by a few feet.  I can't find any confirmation of this but I believe it was told to me on some kind of tour.  The Mississippi is so powerful that you just can't jump in and swim it it - it will suck you under and carry you down.  Bodies might not surface for weeks until the river decides to let them go.  Tree trunks may surface suddenly after having been held down at the river's bottom for years.  In his classic Life on the Mississippi (a future Littourati subject), Mark Twain wrote of the Mississippi River and its character, how it might change course overnight, and how sandbars and logs that served as riverboat landmarks might suddenly disappear and reappear.

The Columbia River, on the other hand, seems like it might have a more wild flavor to it than the Mississippi.  It rises out of British Columbia, and flows northwest before making an almost complete 180 degree turn and heading south through Washington, where it again makes a 90 degree turn and heads west between Oregon and Washington to the Pacific.  It is the largest and longest river in the Pacific Northwest.

There's an interesting Native American legend involving the Columbia River, told by the Klikitat tribe.  A land bridge used to exist across the Columbia, caused by a giant landslide in the Cascade Locks area, which created a giant lake behind it.  Indians may have been able to cross the river on that bridge, which they called Bridge of the Gods.  Eventually, the water broke through and created the Cascade Rapids in the Columbia Gorge.  The Klikitat Indians explain these natural occurrences by relating that the chief of the gods and his two sons were traveling in the area and decided they wanted to settle there.  The chief shot his arrow in one direction, and one son went that way, and then he shot an arrow in the other direction, and his other son followed that.  He then raised the land bridge over the river so that he could get together with his sons.  Eventually, as is usual, the sons got into a fight over a woman.  Forests were leveled and villages were destroyed.  Angry, the chief of the gods turned one son into Mount Hood, the other into Mount Adams, and the woman became Mount St. Helens.

I love legends like this, as I explained before, when people explain through stories the natural phenomena they don't understand.  I also found very interesting LHM's story about Astoria's salvation from the hands of angry natives wanting to wipe it out.  The threat of smallpox was very real in historic America.  The disease was unknown in North America until Europeans brought it with them, and over the course of the next 200 years it decimated the Native American population.  The British supposedly used smallpox as a biological weapon during the French and Indian Wars by giving smallpox infected blankets to Indians under Chief Pontiac who were besieging them at Fort Detroit.

So, by the time of Astoria's founding, smallpox was very much a fear.  In fact, one of the characters in Astoria's history is a Kootenay womnan named Kaúxuma Núpika, or the Manlike Woman, who was a prophetess who said that the white men had changed her sex, and who got in trouble with her tribe by predicting smallpox.  She appeared in Astoria with a young woman she called her wife, and was there for a short period of time because her life was in danger.  That Duncan McDougall, then in charge of Fort George as Astoria was called for a time under the British, could take a small vial out in front of hostile Chinook chiefs and cow them into leaving the fort alone testifies to the fear that the native population had of the disease.  He was called "the great smallpox chief" and even later, some tribes feared that if they made any missteps that angered the whites the commander of the fort would level a plague at them.

Of course, nowadays biological warfare, even the threat of such, is outlawed by international law.  However, I understand that research was done to develop smallpox as a weapon only a few decades ago, and that stores of smallpox still exist in the US and Russia, as well as in North Korea.  The degrees of separation between a small city in Oregon and such topics such as biological weaponry is hard to imagine.  However, given that one man saw a threat and in turn threatened to loose upon his enemies a deadly disease and given that until 30 years ago biological weapons were considered to be valid weapons of war by governments (and some governments and groups might still consider them to be on the table in a crisis) shows that human nature hasn't changed much.

Musical Interlude

Did you know that the cult film (at least I call it a cult film) The Goonies was set in Astoria?  I must admit that I've never seen The Goonies, though I know it was the big break in the career of future Notre Dame icon and hobbit sidekick Sean Astin.  The following song, So Long, Astoria is from the soundtrack to that film.  It is by The Ataris and is also the title song to their album of the same name.

If you want to know more about Astoria

AstoriaOregon.com
Astoria-Warrenton Chamber of Commerce and State of Oregon Welcome Center
The Daily Astorian (newspaper)
El.com: Astoria
Port of Astoria
Wikipedia: Astoria

Next up: St. Helens, Oregon

Blue Highways: Fort Clatsop, Oregon

Unfolding the Map

William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) reflects on Lewis and Clark's wet, dreary Christmas at Fort Clatsop, while I reflect on the gifts that were given and the presence of Sacagawea.  To see where the second winter camp of the Corps of Discovery is located, here's the map.

Book Quote

"Inland some distance from Seaside, near the base of the northwestern prong of Oregon that sticks into the Columbia estuary, Lewis and Clark made winter camp, their last outpost before returning home.  Here at Fort Clatsop they celebrated the first American Christmas in the Northwest.  The men who smoked received a gift of tobacco, the others handkerchiefs; Sacagawea gave Clark two dozen weasel tails, and Lewis gave him a pair of socks.  Their dinner on that 'showery, wet and disagreeable' Christmas, Clark said, was 'poor elk so much spoiled that we ate it through mere necessity, some spoiled pounded fish, and a few roots.'  All without salt.  Despite the pester of fleas and mosquitoes, the group was 'cheerful all the morning.'"

Blue Highways: Part 6, Chapter 5

Fort Clatsop, Oregon. Site of the second winter camp of Lewis and Clark. Photo by Glenn Scofield Williams and hosted at Wikimedia Commons. Click on photo to go to site.

Fort Clatsop, Oregon

When I grew up in Northern California, I used to look forward to Christmas.  I got excited for all the usual reasons kids got excited - I would get lots of cool stuff to play with.  I remember that each Christmas the weather was usually cold, many times it was overcast or foggy, and sometimes it was rainy.  As an adult going back to visit my mother and sister during the holidays, I think that more often than not we had rainy holidays, and a couple of times I would even worry about getting stuck there.  My hometown was served by only two two-lane roads (Highway 20, and Highway 1) and a third road that was an alternative way to the east (Highway 128) but getting to which meant taking Highway 1 for a few miles.  When a landslide or flooding would occur, I would have to stay until the roads could be cleared.  Since rain is a part of life in the Pacific Northwest, you just live with it.

I used to look forward to the great toys I would get.  I wouldn't say that I was overly spoiled at Christmas - I remember always being envious of my cousins because they would get all the really good stuff like race car sets and Pong in the first year that Pong came out and an air hockey table.  Back in the 70s those were really big hauls.  I never got stuff like that but I got cool things to mess around with.

Occasionally I would hear about the Christmas hardships that families like my parents' dealt with, especially during the Depression.  I heard how families would make do with what they had.  About how togetherness was most important at Christmas time rather than the gifts, which were just the expression of family love.  Yeah, yeah, yeah, blah, blah, blah was my attitude.  Just give me the stuff.

I imagine a lot of kids are like that in our hyper-consumerism driven culture.  But now that I'm older, I actually discourage people from getting me gifts for Christmas.  My wife and I often have a rule, which we break usually but we try to observe, to not get each other Christmas gifts but to just do something together.  Usually we are at one of our families places, either in Florida or California (though a not so secret dream of mine is to someday celebrate Christmas in a foreign country).  My family has started doing the same thing.  One of my sisters steadfastly refuses to stop buying Christmas gifts, but my mom and other sister, as well as myself, observe the rule.  My wife's family has started giving donations to each others' favorite charity in lieu of gifts.

I think that giving Christmas gifts has become so expected, with stores beginning to promote and advertise Christmas just after Halloween, that the meaning of what a gift really symbolizes has been lost.  Think about it this way.  Out of the blue, you get a compliment on your hair or the shirt you are wearing.  Because it is a surprise it is a gift to you and it is special.  If you wake up every morning expecting a compliment on your hair or clothes, and you get one, it ceases to become special.  It becomes part of a routine.  Christmas is complex, because it comes one time a year and we are expected to give and to get.  So how do we keep the magic and specialness in Christmas giving given all the pressures and expectations.

I like the description of Christmas, as quoted by LHM, of the Lewis and Clark expedition.  It was the first Christmas in the American Northwest.  It was dreary and raining, but that didn't stop the men of the Corps of Discovery from celebrating with a "Selute, shouts and a song which the whol party joined under our windows."  The gifts were simple and utilitarian based on what the people liked and needed.  Tobacco.  Socks.  Weasel tails.  I'm not sure what the weasel tails were used for - most likely their fur which could be traded but I don't know.  However, from what Lewis and Clark recorded these appeared to received gladly.  According to the Lewis and Clark Trail's online timeline, besides Sacagawea, some other Indians gave the Corps some black root before they left that evening.

In other words, Christmas was simple and yet meaningful and the group seems to have been thankful for what they received.  It was also inclusive, celebrated with Christian and non-Christian alike.  I'm sure that, as he smoked his tobacco, the average man on the Lewis and Clark expedition didn't bemoan his gift but was thankful for it.  It met his need, and it made him happy.

Musical Interlude

Sacagewea comes up repeatedly in the Lewis and Clark accounts.  She was the wife of a French scout, and was used mostly as an interpreter, but also loaned her services occasionally as a guide.  She was essential to the expedition, and Clark, as he was returning home from the journey, wrote this to her husband Toussaint Charbonneaum according to Wikipedia:  "...your woman who accompanied you that long dangerous and fatigueing rout to the Pacific Ocian and back diserved a greater reward for her attention and services on that rout than we had in our power to give her at the Mandans."  Written history suggests she died young at the age of 25 a few years after the expedition, while oral history claims she lived to be an old woman and died in Wyoming.  She was taken as a symbol of the women's suffrage movement, and is one of only three women honored on circulating US coinage (Susan B. Anthony and Helen Keller are the others). The only song I could find referencing Sacagawea was, interestingly enough, Stevie Wonder's Black Man from Songs in the Key of Life.  There are two lyrics.  The first reads:

Scout who used no chart
Helped lead Lewis and Clark
Was a red woman

and later, in a shouted question and answer between adult teacher and students:

Who was the first American
heroine who aided the Lewis
and Clark expedition?
Sacagawea, a red woman

Sacagewea was an American hero, fit to be put alongside all other American heroes.

If you want to know more about Fort Clatsop

Fort Clatsop National Memorial
Fort Clatsop Travel Photos by Galen R. Frysinger
Great Oregon Vacations: Fort Clatsop
Lewis and Clark National Historical Park
Wikipedia: Fort Clatsop

Next up: Astoria, Oregon