[or-roots] First in Oregon City - 1843

[Cecil Houk]

      Nineveh Ford's narrative
Time & Place: Room 8 Chemeketa Hotel
 Salem, Oregon  Monday June 17th 1878
Present: Ford & the writer: AB

......

   Then we sailed down the Columbia to the mouth of the Willamette.  After we got into the
Willamette there came up a gale of strong wind up the river in the direction we were going and that
endangered our craft it finally raised the waves six feet high and they would slush over the entire
craft and cargo and over our heads.  It required two Indians and two white men to bale out the
canoes, a man to each canoe.  They found that they could bale it out as fast as it would slush in.
I kept the craft as near in the middle of the river because it was smoother there than it was near
the shore.  Our craft ran very rapidly up the stream until we got to the rapids below Oregon City.
There the wind slacked up and we tied up for the night.  In the morning we towed the craft over the
rapids with ropes 4 men and myself and we got to Oregon City.  It was the first cargo of wagons that
ever was landed at Oregon City by land or sea.  They were landed on the 10th day of November 1843.

     At the Cascades there was a Negro woman, and there was a canoe tied up on the shore.  The Negro
woman went out into the canoe to dip up some water, and the canoe sheered from under her and she
fell in and disappeared.  She was never seen again.  She had been a servant attached I think to
Burnett or his brother-in-law's family.