I’ve written before (see here and here) about Jesse Applegate, who was part of the Great Migration of 1843. Jesse Applegate had the distinction of leading the “Cow Column” on the first large wagon train to Oregon.
Several thousand head of cattle accompanied the wagons and emigrants of the Cow Column. The pioneers had separated into those with four or more cattle and those without animals or with only a milk cow or two. The fear was that the herds would slow the emigrants down. Mr. Applegate was chosen as the leader of those with herds. Whether the emigrants’ fears about speed were baseless, or whether Mr. Applegate simply managed the Cow Column well, the wagons with cattle stayed only about a day behind the cow-less wagons all the way to Oregon City.
Although this was the first large company of emigrants to drive cattle to Oregon, there were cows in the territory prior to the wagon company of the Great Migration in 1843. Hudson Bay Company, which ran Fort Vancouver for the British prior to the United States assuming full control of Oregon Territory, owned almost all the cattle in Oregon until 1837. John McLaughlin leased cows to emigrating settlers, but he would not sell them. He rationalized his policy as follows:
“Every settler had as much wheat on loan as he wanted to begin with, and I lent them each two cows, as in 1825 we had only twenty-seven head, big and small, old and young.
“If I sold they would of course be entitled to the increase, and I would not have the means to; assist the new settlers, and the settlement would be retarded, as those purchasers who offered me two hundred dollars for a cow would put such a price on the increase as would put it out of the power of poor settlers to buy. This would prevent industrious men settling. For these reasons I would not sell but loaned, as I say, two cows to each settler, and in case the increase of set tlers might be greater than we could atford to supply with cattle, I reserved the right to take any cattle I require . . . .”
But by 1837, Hudson’s Bay Company had over 1000 head of cattle, and the American settlers chafed at the “lease only” policy. To avoid the Hudson Bay Company’s monopoly on cattle, in 1837, the Willamette Cattle Company was formed for the purpose of buying cattle in California and herding them to Oregon.
Ewing Young (an enterprising trader in Santa Fe, California, and Oregon) was hired to procure the cattle and bring them north. Young and several other men sailed from Oregon to California, where they purchased over 700 longhorn cattle. The longhorns had grazed wild in California and were difficult to manage, and it took Young and his men four months to herd the animals to Oregon. Approximately 630 of the beasts survived, and these cattle formed the nucleus of many farmers’ herds in Oregon. For a detailed description of this trek, see F.G. Young and Joaquin Young, Ewing Young and His Estate: A Chapter in the Economic and Community Development of Oregon, The Quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Sept. 1920), pp. 171-315, which can be found at http://www.jstor.org/stable/20610165.
As a side note, prior to the 1837 cattle expedition, Ewing Young had started a distillery to produce alcohol in Oregon. The Methodist Missionaries objected, which led to the formation of the Oregon Temperance Society. This society remained active in Oregon for decades.
Ewing Young died in Oregon in 1841. He left no will. At that early date in the territory’s development there were no probate laws. Given the number of commercial enterprises that Young had engaged in (far more than distilleries and cattle), he had many debtors and creditors, and the territory was forced to create a judgeship to deal with his estate. A lengthy description of the probate issues, along with the text of many contemporaneous documents, can be found in the Ewing Young and His Estate article referenced above.
The early imposition of some form of law required by uncertainties around Ewing Young’s estate in turn led to the creation of the Provisional Government of Oregon—the first government in Oregon. Dr. Ira Leonard Babcock had been selected as the first judge in Oregon to handle the Young estate, and he also took over the executive and legislative powers in the territory until the Provisional Government was formed in 1843. The new Provisional Government developed the Organic Laws of Oregon, adopted in 1843, just months before Jesse Applegate and his cows arrived.
When the Organic Laws were revised in 1845, Jesse Applegate was one of the legislative representatives. He also developed the Applegate Trail, a southern route into Oregon City to avoid the dangerous Columbia River, and helped to develop the Barlow Road.
Thus, Jesse Applegate and Ewing Young, two “cattle men,” had an outsized influence on Oregon history.
What outsized characters in history have impressed you?
