John Ball

[Jeffrey Kopp]

The "trouble" John Ball made may have been no more than that of the
typical American immigrant of the day: coming for fortune, running
out of luck, crashing McLoughlin's party and staking a claim.

Ball joined a fur-hunting party led by Nathaniel Wyeth in Baltimore
in 1832, which fell apart by the time they got to Vancouver.  The HBC
still had the area pretty well sewn up and were actively discouraging
newcomers, and the men weren't prepared for the hardships of the
frontier.  But as he typically did when confronted with hungry
American newcomers on his doorstep with winter coming, McLoughlin
took Ball and Wyeth in, though he tried to get them to remain
uninvolved with local affairs. Ball insisted on participating,
however, in the guise of earning his keep, so McLoughlin let him
teach the fort's children, all offspring of white men and native
women.

In this passage from Ball's journal, he describes his activity of
that winter and the next year.   Intent on remaining, Ball decided to
farm, and again, as he  typically did when faced with yet another
American who wouldn't go home, McLoughlin kindly but probably
reluctantly lent Ball a grubstake and sent him across the Columbia.  

Ball notes that Dr. McLoughlin's (here unnamed) wife was a Chippewa,
but makes no mention of languages spoken at the Fort.

"The next day Mr. Wyeth and myself were invited by Doctor McLoughlin,
the oldest partner and  nominal governor, to his own table and rooms
at the fort. Others were quartered out of the fort. I soon gave
Doctor McLoughlin and Captain Wyeth to understand that I was on my
own hook, and had no further connection with the party.  We were
received with the greatest kindness as guests, or else we would have
had to hunt for subsistence.  But not liking to live gratis, I asked
the doctor, (he was a physician by profession), for some employment.
He repeatedly answered me that was a guest and not expected to work.
But after much urging, he said if I was willing he would like me to
teach his own son and the other boys in the fort, of whom there were
a dozen.  Of course, I gladly accepted the offer.  So the boys were
sent to my room to be instructed.  All were half-breeds, as there was
not a white woman in Oregon.  The doctor's wife was a 'Chippewa,'
from Lake Superior, and the lightest woman was Mrs. Douglas, a
half-breed, from Hudson Bay.  I found the boys docile and attentive
and they made good progress.  The doctor often came into the school,
and was well satisfied and pleased.  One day he said: 'Ball, anyway,
you will have the reputation of teaching the first school in Oregon.'

"So I passed the winter of 1832 and 1833. The gentlemen of the fort
were pleasant and intelligent. A circle of a dozen or more sat at a
well-provided table, which consist partners, the clerks, Captain
Wyeth, and myself.  There was much formality at the table.  Men
waited on the table, and we saw little of the women, they never
appearing except perhaps on Sunday, or on horseback.  As riders they
excelled.  The national boundary not been settled beyond the
mountains at this time.  The traders claimed the river would be the
boundary.  The south side the American.  The fur trade was their
business, and if an American vessel came up the river, or coast, they
would bid up on furs, and if necessary a price ten to one above their
usual prices.  So American traders soon got entirely discouraged.

"When Doctor McLoughlin found I was bent on farming, he loaned me
farming utensils and seed for sowing, and as many horses as I chose
to break in for teams.  I took the seed and implements by boat,
getting help up the Willamette to the falls, passing the site of
Portland and beyond the now Oregon City about 50 miles from Fort
Vancouver.  We carried by the falls, boat and all, and first stopped
with one of the neighbors, a half-breed, J.B. Desportes, who had two
wives and seven children, and plenty of cats and dogs.  I caught from
the prairie a span of horses with a lasso, made a harness, and set
them to work.  For harness I stuffed some deerskins, sewed in proper
form. for collars, fitted them for the harness, crooked oak limbs
tied top and bottom with elk skin strings.  Then to these, strips of
hide was fastened tugs, which I tied to the drag, made from a crotch
of a tree. On this, I drew out logs for my cabin, which, when I had
laid up and put up rafters to make the roof I covered with bark
peeled from the cedar trees.  This bark covering was secured by poles
crossed, and tied at the ends with wood strings to the timbers below.
Then out of some split plank I made a bedstead and a table, and I
dwelt in a house of fir and cedar."

Charles H. Carey, General History of Oregon (3d ed 1971) 275-6. ( I
just happened to be reading at about this point.)

This entry is expanded somewhat in Ball's Autobiography, Across the
Plains to Oregon, 1832, which is online as an e-text at
http://www.xmission.com/~drudy/mtman/html/jball.html

Regards,

Jeff

On Sun, 15 Apr 2001 14:08:00 -0700, "peter webster"
<peterweb at BENDNET.COM> wrote:

>Margarite McLoughlin, I think, was a cree-speaker, originally... Narcissa
>Whitman said she spoke "a little French." Sounds like John Ball was sort of
>like the Rev Beaver, who arrived at the post around then and made a great
>deal of trouble...
>
>
>At 8:13 PM -0700 4/13/01, Mike Cleven wrote:
>>George Lang wrote:
>>>
>>> Since the matter of John Ball has come up , I thought I'd append the
>>> following information from a recent hagiography of Ranald MacDonald, a son
>>> of Concomly (Lewis and Murakami, 1990)
>>>
>>> John Ball opened a school in 1832 at Fort Vancouver "for two dozen half-
>>> breed Indian children of the HBC employees.  These children ranged in age
>>> from six to sixteen years and "talked the Cree, Nez Percé, Chinook,
>>> Klickitat and other Indian languages."
>>>
>>> In this context one might read "Chinook" to mean Chinook proper, but the
>>> following passage from Ranald MacDonald suggests not:
>>>
>>> "I attended the school to learn my A.B.C. and English. The big boys had a
>>> medal put over their necks, if caught speaking French or Chinook, and when
>>> school was out had to remain and learn a task...."
>>>
>>> John Ball's job, as he conceived it, was to discourage Wawa. He "dunced"
>>> them.
>
>peter