A History of Whaling at Lake Pend Orielle
Introduction
History is usually made from what is known, events, people, facts. Much of history is obscured by secrecy; shame, embarrassment, or state secrets obscure much of what we know of history. It's these small secrets obscured by time and the deaths of the small number of participants that has kept this history unknown until now.
The story begins in some sense perhaps 10,000 years ago when the forces of thawing ice created vast freshwater lakes in what is now the Northwest USA. It was known of course long before white explorers arrived to make it a history. The native tribes played some as yet unknown role in this history but were almost certainly a part of it.
Finally like most history we must understand the context of the times and what drove the events recorded here.
The Civil War Context
By the middle of the Civil War it was apparent to many in the Confederacy leadership that the course of the war would be dictated by economic strength and that the industrial North would dominate with their industrial base and a blockade on commerce for the South left them bereft of the resources to conduct the war. Among the many blockade induced shortages was energy. In the middle 19th century before the advent of coal, gas, and petroleum fuels, whale oil remained an important resource for an industrial economy. The South was reliant on whale oil imported from the whaling areas of the Northeast around Nantucket; New Bedford, and Martha’s Vineyard. Of course the Secession stopped this trade and with the skills and ships for whaling only present in the North the problem became acute for the South.
The Northwest Explorers
In 1807 David Thompson, the English-born trader and cartographer was establishing himself as perhaps the greatest surveyor of his time. Surveying and mapping millions of square miles in the areas of present day Alberta, British Columbia, Washington, Idaho, and Montana he was one of the earliest and most established figures after Lewis and Clark first explored here.
In the fall of 1809 David Thompson and his clerk Finan McDonald established a small trading post on the present day Hope peninsula. This was called Kullyspel House after the local native American tribe.
While much has been written about David Thompson not as much is celebrated about Finan. The red headed Scot wrote in a legible hand but a difficult to decipher English. His dispatches have been preserved and a copy had made its way into the hands of Jubal Early probably by way of his father’s extensive library on the plantation Jubal grew up on. It is believed he must have read and deciphered these dispatches as they would become central to the story told here.
When confronted by the lack of resources Jefferson Davis the president of the Confederacy called upon his leadership to consider means to to alleviate the lack of resources. Jubal having read the letter was recollected to the writings of Finan McDonald and a mysterious passage. What is probably this passage is transcribed below.
Erly in the mornin I walked to the edge of the lake. The Cursed smake of the indiam camp and the smell od rottin salmon that is part of the Cuntre was laidin a thick lair on the water. In the still silinc of the mornin I saw puffs of smoke or myst rising from the water and followed by sound not unlike a hors makes when it exhales. I wood hear this sound over the next few months as I stayed in this wretched place. Though I rode a canoe out twards these puffs of myst and noise I never saw their source. I supposed them to be some kind of underwater geysirs much as I had seen near the Snake river.
Jubal had long suspected that this was not a geyser but instead were whales. His imagination had been sparked by the popular Moby Dick published in the previous decade and he had decided that Finan must have seen whales.
He wrote to Jefferson Davis of his suspicions and offered to assemble a party of men to travel overland to Lake Pend Oreille to reconnoitre these suspicions and to set about harvesting the whales for oil if found to be true.
In early 1863 a party of a dozen men was assembled to carry out this expedition. What was missing was expertise on whaling. Fortunately for Jubal’s plans the South’s ally Great Britain had hosted an American colony of whalers after the revolutionary war. This colony on the west coast in Wales was called Milford Haven. It housed a thriving community of American whalers and the British government was able to persuade a Nathanial Starbucks, grandson of one of the founders of the Milford Haven colony with the promise of money and land from the estate of Jubal Early to join the expedition. (Some people believe that Bernard Cornwall’s fictional character Nathaniel Starbucks was modelled on him though his character was born in Boston, MA.)
Nathanial departed on a British blockade runner called CSS Kate and slipped past the Northern blockade to land in Charleston, South Carolina. He travelled to Western Tennessee where the expedition was assembled. Twelve Confederate soldiers from Second Corps Army of Northern Virginia and a Welsh-American whaler departed on horseback with a team of 50 mules and skinners. The mules were loaded with harpoons, construction tools and 8 vast iron pots for trying blubber to oil. A pair of coopers was employed to build barrels to return the anticipated oil back to the South.
What commenced was perhaps the greatest uncelebrated expedition of its time. Within 50 years of Lewis and Clark these men struck out to the heart of wilderness hardly any better known in the 50 years hence. They face the usual hazards of wild animals, ferocious weather, hostile Indians, and at times accident and starvation. Little is known of the Great Early expedition (later known as the Great Early Folly by some) as the victors write the history and probably not some measure of shame from the failure of the project caused the history to be downplayed or even suppressed by those who knew of it. The expedition measured in its own terms was a success, only the timing was bad. But such is history, that all depends on timing.
What follows is based on the diary of one of the men of the expedition Private Frank Davies. From what we know Private Davies was a literate little-known bastard son of William Early Davies of Tennessee. Some believe his mother was a slave but he was brought up in the plantation Manor House.
They drew upon the journals and travels of the Lewis and Clark expedition, accounts of the travels of David Thomson and Finan McDonald a few years later. David Thompson travelled the length of the Clark Fork river described earlier by Meriwether Lewis on the Lewis and Clark expedition. It appears the Great Early Expedition struck west from Tennessee to St Louis before traveling the route of Lewis and Clark up the Missouri River diverting near present-day Missoula Montana to descend the Clark Fork river that would place them at the remains of Kullyspel House.
One must recall that much had changed between the time that Lewis and Clark and David Thomson had travelled through this territory. St Louis had swelled with northern European immigrants and the original French Trading post had become a town. Situated between free and slave owning states the residents would have had those supportive of the South and those opposed. The Expedition travelled up the Missouri River and by 1863 the US Army had calmed the tensions with the Native Americans and when they reached Ft Benton they could rely on the recently built Mullan road. However, they had to be careful as there were Union regiments in the area; though they were mostly concerned with keeping the peace with the Native Americans. This would take them as far as the Missoula area. From there they followed down the Clark Fork to the present-day Hope Peninsula.
By the fall of 1863 the expedition had made it to the shores of the Hope peninsula on Lake Pend Orielle. In a state of poor morale, the men began to build a settlement for the harsh winter. They were able to refurbish some of the buildings that David Thompson had built some 50 years earlier though they must have been in poor shape owing to the weather. They housed themselves in bunk fashion in one of the fur trade warehouses. Nathanial had a team of men construct a pair of whaling boats. Others proceeded to gather the huge amount of firewood needed for the trying out process. Barrels were also made though the coopers complained at the lack of appropriate hardwood and had to make do with Spruce and Douglas fir.
Nathanial had an apparently difficult job ahead of him. The diaries indicate he had to drill the men who rowed the boats how to row as a team so they were fast over the water and would go in the way he wanted. He tried out several men until he found a big Swede who could accurately and powerfully throw the harpoon as well as he could.
By the time these preparations were made winter had descended on the lake and for a good part of the winter the lake had frozen over leaving the party to huddle in their bunkhouse to stay warm and eat through their supplies. They traded with the local Kalispell for smoked salmon and warm furs with beads and iron tools they brought for that purpose.
In early spring, the ice broke and they began to venture onto the lake. It wasn't long until Nathanial had spotted the spouting of a whale. While he had been sceptical of the idea of whales in a fresh water lake he reported he saw the unmistakeable puff of mist from a whale’s blowhole. He noted that it did not have any characteristic shape of any whale he had seen. The men rowed out to this encounter however the whale had dived before the men, still out of shape from the long winter hibernation, could reach it.
It wasn't until the end of April that year that saw another spout and made all haste to position over the whale. Nathanial threw the harpoon and it struck and lodged in the whale. The whale immediately surfaced and swam away from the boat. It was a small whale, apparently the size of an Orca or Killer Whale, completely black however. It quickly tired and was harpooned again and when it had bled to death was hauled back to the camp; an hour of intense rowing. Here the blubber was flensed from its body on the shingle shore and cut up into chunks to be tried out (trying out is the term used to describe the process of turning fat into oil.) into oil. The men were tired and complained of the unaccustomed exertion after their long rest during the iced–in period.
The cooper’s barrels were now used. Filled with water to swell and seal the wood they were now emptied and refilled with warm oil. The lids were fitted, and they were rolled into the bunkhouse for storage. The rich smell of oil combined with the acrid smoke of burning pine and fir, a smell that would always bring back these days of hard work to the men when they were home again and cooking over a fire.
Some success had heartened the men, and their hearts became full of that sense of purpose that men have when they have work that has meaning. They wondered how the war progressed a continent away and about their families and comrades.
The next day they explored in their small boats with renewed energy and found their prey more quickly. The whales, a kind of pilot whale one imagines from the descriptions, were not accustomed to being hunted and once found the men made easy prey of them. Slapping an oar repeatedly upon the water would often bring one up to the boat out of curiosity. And so, through the spring and summer the men went about their merciless slaughter, their hearts full of accomplishment, adventure, and longing for home.
The barrels of oil accumulated; in inverse proportion, the men’s success dwindled. They counted the barrels and the remaining mules and knew that when the number of barrels numbered twice the number of mules it would be time to leave. The days lengthened into summer the men itching to leave and disappointment set in when they found that Nathanial had bargained for horses with the Kullyspel.
Finally, by late July 1864 the expedition had to be wound up. Whales were impossible to find except for one old wise matron who evaded them. They made their camp tidy out of pride and perhaps the idea of a returning expedition. The mules and horses were loaded with oil barrels, food and camp supplies. The whaling equipment and great pots were sunk in a shallow bay of the lake, and careful notes taken as to its location, to keep them from the local Indians. The boats were dragged behind a mule on rough wood skids. The bunkhouse and warehouse were nailed shut. They departed the first of August in hopes of beating the early snows as they crossed the passes and into the great plains.
The men’s spirits lifted on the knowledge of heading home as they moved up the Clark Fork and over the mountains to the drainage of the Missouri. Here the boats were repaired, made watertight and floated on the Missouri. This allowed them to make great time traveling to the Mississippi at St Louis. Here they found the war was not going well for the Confederacy. They could not travel to Mobile Alabama as planned when they learned the Union had laid siege to the city earlier in the summer and so had to load their precious oil onto mules again this time bound for Galveston Texas. By the time they reached Galveston the war was over.
Nobody knows what happened to the cargo, but it is believed to have been sold and the proceeds distributed to the men. Nathanial proceeded to Virginia and reported to Jubal Early. He was hastily thanked for his efforts and boarded a ship bound for England.
The legacy of this small piece of American history is not well known. All we know today is there is no trace of whales on Lake Pend Orielle. That last reported old matron must have died, wandering the depths and coves of the lake lonely and alone, her great heart sunk in the grief of that summer’s spasm of violence and lost innocence. The last of her species, unknown to American zoology. An American version of the Madagascar elephant bird known only for its few remaining bones and broken shells.
Bones of these great beasts may yet litter the floor of the deepest parts of the lake. There is of course speculation as to how they arrived here. Were they trapped in some vast sea that was landlocked by a rising continent? Perhaps during some great rushing of water after the ice-dam from the Cordilleran Ice Sheet broke and released ancient Lake Missoula they were encouraged somehow to swim upstream only to become stranded when the flood subsided, like the mysterious instances of modern-day whales swimming up rivers for unknown reasons.
Whatever happened we are left with mostly our imaginings of the sleek black back of a whale breaking the morning calm on the lake as a bald eagle wheels overhead. Or some misty evening in a small becalmed inlet, the whoosh of warm fishy air and an eruption of a cloud of mist breaks the silence as the dark woods settle in for another century old sleep.
The origin story of these whales can be found here...
Doug Morse
