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Moss. 
The use 0 nd abuse of 
history in the new western 
novel: A C8se study of 
Tr'>sk. 1977. 
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USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY IN THE NEW WESTERN NOVEL: 
A CASE STUDY OF TRASK 
by 
JAMES DAVIDSON MOSS 
A THESIS 
Presented to the Department of History 
and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon 
in partial fulfillment of the requirements 
for the degree of 
Master of Arts 
December 1977 

An Abstract of the Thesis of 
James Davidson Moss for the degree of 
in the Department of History to be taken 
Master of Arts 
December 1977 
Title: The Use and Abuse of History in the New Western Novel: 
A Case Study of Trask 
Approved: !L ~ ~ 
Edwin R. Bingham 
The novels of Don Berry rank among the best to emerge from the 
Northwest and can be considered as serious entries in a growing group 
of New Western novels. While the term "New Western" is widely used, 
definitions of its meaning are diverse and at times conflicting. This 
study delves into the diversity and presents a definition of the New 
Western novel as a historical tool. The New Western is seen as a probe 
into the themes and traditions of the western experience, and . as such 
it can be used in the study of history. The use of fiction in the study 
of history presents several problems, however, because a novelist goes 
beyond the usual constraints of a factual record. How the novelist 
uses, or in some cases abuses, the historical record is important to 
the historian. This study examines Don Berry's Trask as an example of a 
New Western novel to determine the manner in which the historical records 
and traditions of the Northwest have been adapted to use in fiction. 

APPROVED:_c _(_..:...c- _; w--__ • _t1-___:._·_~-=-- +--- -
Edwin R. Bingham 
ii 

VITA 
NAME OF AUTHOR: James Davidson Moss 
PLACE OF BIRTH: Haverhill, Massachusetts 
DATE OF BIRTH: March 21, 1946 
UNDERGRADUATE AND GRADUATE SCHOOLS ATI'ENDED: 
Wesleyan University 
University of Oregon 
DEGREES AWARDED: 
Bachelor of Arts, 1975, University of Oregon 
AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST: 
United States Social and Cultural History 
Northwest History 
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE: 
Teaching Assistant, Department of History, 
University of Oregon, 1975-1977 
Project Assistant, Inventory Phase, Kam Wah Chung 
Museum, John Day, Oregon 
AWARDS AND HONORS : 
PUBLICATIONS: 
iii 

iv 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
Chapter 
I. INTRODUCTION: THE NEW WESTERN NOVEL. 1 
I I . DON BERRY AND TRASK • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 24 
III. HISTORICAL :&\.CKBROUND ................... 34 
IV. USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY .................. 78 
V. BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 

I. INTRODUCTION: TIIE NEW WESTERN NOVEL 
Western fiction, western novels, western stories, or just plain 
Westerns; whatever terms are employed, all elicit a definite image in 
the collective mind of the reading public. Any writing labeled as 
'western' is doomed to be stigmatized as primitive, shallow, stilted, 
1 
and without any redeeming literary or historical value. Over the years 
the term 'western' has . become synonymous with 'fornnila,' and certainly 
this circumstance has come about with a considerable degree of justifi-
cation. As a source of literary material, the American West has been 
sorely abused almost from its inception. In the 19th century the West 
became associated with popular fiction or adventure fiction, and because 
of this identification most serious writers shunned western themes as 
degrading to their principles of art. Writing a review of James Fenimore 
Cooper's Wyandotte in 1843, Edgar Allen Poe reflected the thoughts of 
contemporary literati: 
This theme--life in the wilderness--is one of intrinsic 
and universal interest ... a theme like that of life on 
the ocean, so unfailingly ol1Il1.iprevalent in its power of 
arresting and absorbing attention, that . . . . success or 
popularity is, with such a subject, expected a$ a matter 
of course. 
Poe goes on to relegate the theme of life in the wilderness to the "pop-
ular division" of fiction, in other words to the literary scrapheap, 
because such works IID.lst soon be "lost or forgotten; or remembered, if 

1 
at all, with something very nearly akin to contempt." 
2 
Poe's rather harsh judgement proved somewhat prophetic. The hey-
day of the 'dime novel' produced masses of mindless adventure stories, 
all highly forIIDllized and all virtually indefensible as literature. Yet 
an increasingly crowded, industrialized, and urbanized Eastern public 
devoured the stories in huge quantities. Whether the hero was a miner~ 
a settler, or a scout, he played out a stereotyped role in a repetitive 
plot. Depth of character was discarded in favor of overblown heroism 
and exaggerated virtue. 
Deplorable as this fiction was, however, Irwin and Erastus Beadle 
grew wealthy a£ter 1860 by exploiting the West to supply escape and broad 
entertainment in their dime novels. The public never seemed to tire of 
the same plot conventions and perfect heroes, and the writers were all 
too willing to continue providing what the public wanted. Explaining 
her ever-perfect protagonists, the highly popular . and prolific Emma 
Southworth wrote that she had "catered for what I believed to be the 
2 popular taste, 't To change the heroes was impossible; for how can one 
alter perfection? Stories based on the supposed exploits of real men 
such as fuffalo Bill Cody and Kit Carson were always doctored up a bit 
to fit the standard forIIDllas of the day. One student of 19th century 
popular fiction has called fuffalo Bill "the perfect stuffed shirt of 
the story-paper wilderness." In all of his exploits, 
1Cited in Leslie A. Fiedler, The Return of the Vanishing American 
(New York, 1968), pp. 127-8. 
2
ci ted in Mary Noel, V_1.._· 1 ... 1 .. a_1 ... ·n .. s~G~al=o:;;..;r::;..;e:::......,s-.•.__s-..Th:.:.:;e::.....:H.:.:e::..Y~d:::a:..y~o~f~t=h::::.e 
Popular Story Weekly (New York, 1954), p. 162. 

he never drank . . In [Prentisif Ingraham's stories, he never 
smoked, in [Nei/ Buntline's only occasionally and with 
apologies. In Ingraham's stories he never left off a "g" at 
the end of an "ing" word. He never swore or uttered a word 
of slang. In Buntline's a few liberties of speech were 
allowed him, but even in moments of unrestr~ined anger 
Buffalo Bill was conscious of his audience. · 
3 
Before Ingraham wrote his way to popular fame as the biographer of 
Buffalo Bill, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote of him what could nicely 
serve as his epitaph, nI think we may say that he writes the worst novels 
ever written by anybody. 4 But they sell." 
A turning point came in 1902 when Owen Wister's The Virginian 
became a best seller. The Virginian broke from the mold of starched and 
stereotyped 'western' literature, as Wister attempted to bring depth to 
his characters and weight to his story. The Virginian is not an adven-
ture story, although it has adventuresome moments; it is not a cowboy 
story, although it ostensibly portrays cowboys; and it is not fluffy pop-
ular fiction, although it became a best seller. The Virginian is about 
a moral dilermna that cannot be solved simply with blazing guns, physical 
stamina, or steely-eyed courage. The dilermna .revolves around a theme 
that has become a staple of some of the best, and in a slightly altered 
form some of the worst, twentieth century western writing: the conflict 
between a moral code of law and a statutory code of law. Don D. Walker 
has outlined three types of law demonstrated in t.he West; a natural law 
encompassing the actions of animals and perhaps solitary men, a living 
law covering cultural mores and customs within a small cormmmity 
3Ibid., p. 157. 
4Ibid., p. 18. 

reflecting the needs of that corrnmnity, and a positive law including 
statutory law and legal traditions of civilization. 5 The problem for 
4 
the characters of The Virginian arises when the coII111D.lnity law is in con-
flict with the statutory law, when neither civilization nor frontier com-
nrunity is completely in control. Civilization is overtaking the coII111D.l-
nity, but it is not yet accepted as the characters struggle to solve 
problems with past standards and customs. Judge Henry thus can justify 
the lynching of rustlers by asserting the efficacy of living law over 
statutory law and by saying one 
IIIl..lst take justice back into his own hands where it was 
once at the beginning of all things. Call this primitive, 
if you will. But so far from being a defiance of the 
law, it is an assertion of it--the fundamental assertion 
of self-governing men, upon whom our whole social fabric 
is based. 6 
Wister resolved the dilemma in favor of civil disobedience as the 
only possible moral action for his characters, rejecting the inflexibil-
ity of statutory and civilized law. In so doing, Wister earned the 
approbation of those who deplore the forlIIl..lla Western that followed on 
the heels of The Virginian; and by raising the question of moral dilemmas 
for the characters in western fiction, Wister deserves the praise of 
those who hope for high quality literature from the West. 
Western fiction after The Virginian had two paths to follow: one · 
led to a thorough examination of the American cha:I:acter and the American 
epic as it was played out in the vast expanses of the West; and the other 
led to a return to the empty popular fiction of the 19th century with a 
slight modification of the standard plots and characters. Unfortunately, 
5 Don D. Walker, "The Meaning of Outlaw in the Mind of the West," 
The Possible Sack, I, no. 8 (1970), p. 1. 
60wen Wister, The Virginian (Boston, 1968), p. 265. 

5 
writers on the West overwhelmingly chose the latter path. With Zane 
Grey'.s The Spirit of the Border (1906) and Riders of the Purple Sage 
(1912), both best sellers, the age of the cowboy Western arrived. The 
old wild-west weeklies and dime novels gave way to pulp and slick maga-
zines which specialized in adventure stories aimed at nominal adults. 
The birth of the modern Western formula coincided with several 
factors that assured its success, while at the same time sealing the 
doom at least temporarily of quality fiction about the West. Growing 
numbers of public school graduates swelled the reading ranks; turn of 
the century patriotism searched for distinctively American heroes and 
found them in the cowboys of the forIIlllla West. As people became familiar 
with novels instead of short stories through serialization in magazines, 
and as novels shrank in average size, the forIIlllla Westerns (along with 
other formula fiction such as detective stories) provided an escape from 
the problems of an increasingly fast-paced urban life. In a complex 
society the West seemed to offer a respite, an oasis of refreshing rural 
t . . 7 ac 1v1ty. 
Writers more and more moved away from the facts of the western 
experience in America and concentrated instead on mastery of the 
formula while producing interesting stories. Between 1928 and 1932, at 
least nineteen handbooks appeared giving hints to would-be writers, and 
as testimony to their effectiveness, many amateur writers were able to 
become quite successful by following the guidelines laid out for Western 
7Harold U. Faulkner, The Quest for Social Justice, 1898-1914 (New 
York, 1931), pp. 258-60; John R. Milton, "The Novel in the American 
West," Western Writing, · ed. Gerald W. Haslam (Albuquerque, 1974), 
pp. 75-6. 

6 
writing. 8 Frederick Faust, who wrote under at least nineteen different 
pen-names the most famous of which was Max Brand, once boasted to fellow 
fornru.la writer Frank Gruber, "I have written 300 western books and I've 
used only one plot. The good man becomes the bad man and the bad man 
becomes good. That way you have con£lict. 119 Faust himself had little 
or no respect for the output of his pen-names, saying that it was "junk, 
sheer junk't and had no more literary merit than his readers had literary 
10 perception, but it paid the bills, handsomely. Like most of the form-
ula writers Max Brand lmew nothing of the early West, but he was able to 
create what people imagined it to have been. Frederick D. Glidden gave 
up a: mediocre career as a newspaperman in the 19 30s, and after studying 
books on the craft as well as a few products of other writers he success-
fully cranked out Westerns as Luke Short. 11 His novels resemble nothing 
so nruch as a 1950s housing development: all the houses used the same 
blueprints and only the outside paint varied. 
Richard W. Etulain has .echoed Edgar Allen Poe's lament about the 
themes of the West in his studies of Ernest Haycox. In explaining the 
success of the amateur writer, he claims the formula leaves no room for 
12 the artist, only for the craftsman. The fornrula has so stifled the 
8 Trenton M. White, How to Write for a Living (New York, 1937), 
pp. 314-5. 
9Frank Gruber, The Pulp Jungle (Los Angeles, 1967), p. 183; Robert 
Easton, Max Brand: The Big "Westerner't (Norman, 1970), p. 265. 
lOQuentin Reynolds, The Fiction Factory (New York, 1955), pp. 181-2. 
11 Luke Short, "Ernest Haycox: An Appreciation,n The Call Number, 
XXV (Fall 1963), pp. 2-3. 
1
~ichard W. Etulain, "The Literary Career of a Western Writer: 
Ernest Haycox, 1899-1950, ,t Diss., University of Oregon (1962), p. 98. 

7 
West as to leave no room for the development of social conscience or for 
the reflection on moral and philosophical questions. No matter that 
psychologists see mythic properties, as well as Freudian complexes, inher-
ent in the genre, Westerns fail as literature. 13 And this failure has 
been generalized to all western fiction, thus branding all literature of 
the West as inferior or unworthy of attention. One critic has gone so 
far as to state that the chance for a distinctly western literature has 
been lost forever, because the original western experience was never 
recorded of, by, and for the West; the experience was always "adjusted 
to the dimensions, the tastes, the modes of the East. 11·14 
Such a judgement is too harsh, however, for in the last thirty-five 
years, the novel of the West has matured. Al though the formula Western 
still rides the bookracks in great numbers, a western literature has in 
fact emerged. Writers have begun to examine the American epic and char-
acter as it evolved in the West, and they have revived the West as a lit-
erary setting. New Westerns, so named for the want of a better term, 
attempt to recover the much abused western experience and place it in 
context, complete with its own distinctive traditions, characteristics, 
and topography. Such a course entails a reassessment not only of the 
cheap myth created by the formula Western but also of the definition of 
the West and the themes associated with the western experience. 
13 For example, Warren Barker, "The Stereotyped Western Story: Its 
Latent Meaning and Psycho-economic Function, rt Psycholoanalytic Quarterly 
(June 1955), pp. 271-2. 
14Robert E. Lee, From West to East: Studies in the Literature of 
the American West (Urbana, 1966), pp. 155-63. For a similar though more 
temperate viewpoint, see Bernard DeVoto, 1tPhaeton on the Gunsmoke Trail," 
Harper's (December 1945). 

8 
The West is far more than just a physical setting, although geog-
raphy IID.1st play an important role in any discussion of the West. It is 
an historical concept as well as an imaginative one. Western historical 
fiction needs in some fashion to come to grips with all the facets of 
the West; for, while the various aspects of the West are identifiable 
and subject to categorization, those aspects are all part of the same 
West. Just one of many problems for the western writer is to cope with 
the IIllllti-leveled West. 
The very size and vastness of the West tends to reduce all ques-
tions to physical dimensions. Most writers and historians place the 
demarcation line for the West somewhere between the 95th and 100th merid-
ian; some consider the Mississippi River, some the Missouri River. What-
ever the perception, the West comprises approximately half the land mass 
of the country. Despite the attempts by some to reduce the region to 
arid or semi-arid topography, the West encompasses deserts, broad plains, 
innnense mountain chains, fertile valleys, and rain forests. What tie 
all of these components together are the concepts of space and scale; 
for, whatever the landscape, there is an accompanying impression of large-
ness. The mountains would tower over their counterparts in the East; the 
plains and deserts seem endless; and the trees along the coast are enor-
mous. Many of the early travellers in the West connnented on the vast 
size of everything; descriptions of the geography inevitably reflected 
the impact of size and distance on the observer. In 1845 Joel Palmer 
connnented in his journal on the nalmost countless number of mounds, in 
different directions" while on the prairies; and when he reached the Wind 
Mountains, he was impressed by the "huge masses of ice and snow piled up 
I 
. 
t 

9 
peak upon peak." Further, he "viewed the southern termination of this 
· 15 
range; but they extend to the north farther than the eye can penetrate." 
In 1842 Medorem Crawford in his journal, •tthe most remarkable thing I 
have seen is the deception in distances. Bluffs which appear within 1 
mile are often 5 miles from us." Later as he approached Fort Vancouver 
he called the area "the most romantic country I have yet seen," and he 
connnented on the "tall trees" and "Mt. Hood with its snowy peak glisten-
ing in the sunbeams. 1116 
Washington Irving in Astoria described the tall timber country as 
"woods so close and entangled that it was almost impossible to beat up 
the game. 1117 In 1874 Charles Nordhoff wrote that the sawmill at Astoria 
"with all its buzz and fuzz scarcely Lma.d.fd an appreciable impression 
upon the belt of timber, which so shuts in Astoria that I thought I had 
scarcely room in it to draw a full breath." The forest seemed perched 
to push the mill into the river. Nordhoff recorded another's exclama-
18 tion, "Timber--till you can't sleep." 
Bernard DeVoto effectively caught the impact of the West on the 
pioneers in The Year of Decision: 1846 when he wrote: 
15 Joel Palmer, Journal of Travels over the Rocky Mountains to the 
· Mouth of the Columbia River, ed. Reuben Gold Thwaites (Cleveland, 1906), 
pp. 37, 70-1. 
16F. G. Young, ed., The Journal of Medorem Crawford (Eugene, 1897), 
pp. 10, 21-2. 
17 Cited in David Stratton, "The Diiermna of American Elbowroom," 
Pacific Northwest Quarterly, 56 (January 1965), p. 33. 
18Charles Nordhoff, "The Columbia River and Puget Sound," Harper's 
New Monthly Magazine, XLVIII (February 1874), p. 339; for a similar view 
of the forests, see Joseph Williams, Tour to the Oregon Territory (1841-2) 
(New York, 1921), p. 49. 

The very width and openness of the country was an anxiety, 
It had no bound; the long heave of the continent never 
found a limit, and in that waste, that empty and 
untenanted and lonely waste, the strongest personality 
diminished, There was no place to hide in, and always 
there was the sun to hide from, further shrinking the 
cowering soul: Consciousness dwindled to a point: the 
little line of wagons was pygmy motion in immensity, the 
mind became a speck. A speck always quivering with an 
unidentified dread which few could face and which the · 
weaker ones could not control ... Some survived it 
unchanged or strengthened in their identity; some suffered 
from it, inflicting it on their families, for 
the rest of their lives,19 
Earl Pomeroy has rejected concentration on environment as a tool 
in the study of western history, arguing that such a concentration dis-
torts the reality of the West. 20 While Pomeroy may be correct in aiming 
historical study away from the environment, literary efforts need to con-
centrate on the environment and its effects on individuals. Not to do so 
would be to ignore a large body of journals and diaries of those persons 
who experienced the early West first hand. (In fact it would ignore the 
impact that the West with its size and openness continues to have on new-
comers from the East.) Don D. Walker has argued that the early journals 
are more than just the basis for literature and that they have intrinsic 
l ·t . 21 1 erary merit. While historians may be able to justify the study of 
the effects of man on the environment, those who study literature Im.1st 
19 Bernard DeVoto, Year of Decision: 1846 (Boston, 1942), p, 160, 
20Earl Pomeroy, "Toward a Reorientation of Western History: Con-
tinuity and Environment," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, LXI 
(March 1955), p. · 581. 
21Don D. Walker, "The Mountain Man Journal: Its Significance in a 
Literary History of the Fur Trade," Western Historical Quarterly, V (July 
1974), p. 307. Walker also makes the point that the journals are them-
selves a state of mind of man in the West. 

11 
come to grips with the effects of the environment on man. 
Authors of New Western novels certainly feel the presence of the 
land in the West. Paul Horgan has stated that "if there is a single per-
vasive theme in writing about west, ... it could be identified as the 
theme of man, alone, against the immensity of nature. 1122 According to 
Walter Van Tilburg Clark, "nature, we might say, nn1st become an actor, 
23 
· not a backdrop." Clark later re-emphasized the point that "landscape 
is character, not background. It's not a stage. It's an active agent. 
24 It nn1st be." James Stevens has written that his concern "is with man's 
place in nature; specifically with his place on the land of the Pacific 
Northwest. 1125 
But the West is far more than just geography. Historians have long 
studied a West that began in Europe along the Atlantic seaboard, contin-
ued to the New World shores, and progressed across the continent. The 
historians' West might be termed the frontier, the line of demarcation 
between the untamed wilderness and the encroaching civilization. The 
frontier remains the point of departure for the study of western history, 
although historians, as is their wont, do not agree as to its specific 
significance in the scheme of American history. 
22John R. Milton, "The Western Novel: A Symposium,'r South Dakota 
Review, II (Autumn 1964), p. 28. 
23Ibid., p. 17. 
24John R. Milton, "Conversations with Western American Novelists," 
South Dakota Review, IX (Spring 1971), p. 31. See also Zane Grey, !'for-
ward" of To the Last Man (New York, 1923). 
25 · James Stevens, "Paul Bunyan, Thunderbirds, and Wobblies," North-
west Harvest: A Regional Stocktaking, ed. V. L. O. Chittick (Portland, 
1948), p. 109. 

12 
Whether or not the frontier had a major effect ·on the political 
thinking of the American people, the West had an effect on the imagina-
tion of the country. Neal Lambert of Brigham Young University writes of 
the West as a "cluster of ideas" rather than as an historical concept or 
a physical fact. 26 These ideas are numerous and often contradictory, for ; 
the "terrestrial paradise" of Columbus is also the "howling wilderness" 
of the New England Puritans. 27 The natives are savage yet noble; fron-
tier life is anarchic and democratic. But above all the West is oppor-
tunity, whether for rebirth, freedom, success, simplicity, maturation, 
or escape. 
A number of themes develop from the western experience and from the 
West of the imagination. The landscape and the human drama of history 
suggest movement, struggle, and tension. Movement in the West was con-
stant as settlers moved the frontier line across the face of the contin-
ent, as long caravans of Conestogas trudged over the plains, or as bands 
of trappers roved the streams in search of beaver. The movement west was 
also one of progress, from discovery to settlement; it reflected a matur-
ation, civilization, and success. Usually the movement in the West has 
been seen as a change from simplicity to complexity, from wilderness to 
civilization. Yet certainly no small part of the movement in the West 
was an escape from complexity to simplicity, a rejection of the social 
26Neal Lambert, "Heroes and Villains, Virtue and Vice: American 
Values in the Literature of the West," Essays on the Ame~ican West 1972-73, 
ed. Thomas G. Alexander (Provo, 1974), p. 29. See also Wallace Stegner, 
The Sound of Mountain Water (Garden City, 1969), p. 146. 
27For a fuller discussion of the concepts of 'west' prior to New 
World settlement, see Fiedler, pp. 31~43. 
I 
I 
,1 
accoutrements of civilization in favor of the . freedom and individuality 
of the frontier. 
13 
The theme of the West is also the theme of struggle; it reflects 
the endurance of an individual, a family, a coIIIIID..l.Ility, or a civilization, 
whether in the face of the elements, the land, the natives, or the 
unlmown. There is hope; there is endeavor; and there is success. The 
West is the scene of determined optimism within the struggle for survival, 
and it has not been a stage on which losers tell their stories. 
Above all else, however, the West suggests a theme of tensions 
between value systems, tensions that blur the distinctions between right 
and wrong, good and evil, moral and innnoral. The idea of a frontier nec-
essarily delineates a tension between the wilderness on the one hand and 
civilization on the other, between West and East. What Jay Gurian has 
called "the circular, coIIIIID..l.Ilitarian and non-progressive Indian world-
view" contrasts sharply with what Don Berry terms the "Roman road-build-
ing" world-view of white society. 28 Within the white society itself, 
tension radiated between individual freedom and social . responsibility, 
which brings us back to Don D. Walker's ideas on law in the West, and in 
turn back to The Virginian. 
In connnenting on this tension in the West, Wallace Stegner has writ-
ten that "done in almost diagrammatic mythic terms, or done as realistic 
fiction, it is as inextricable from western writing as the theme of color 
28Jay Gurian, Western American Writing: Tradition and Promise 
(Deland, Fla,, 1975), p. 128; Doug Sbaeffer,Interview with Don Berry, 
1974 (cassette); see also Gordon Dodds, "Man and Nature in the Oregon 
Country: A Historical Survey," The Western Shore, ed. Thomas Vaughn 
(Portland, 1975), pp. 343-4. 

14 
is inextricable from the literature of the South. 1129 But what has tra-
ditionally been missing from western writing is a serious attempt to 
investigate the problems inherent in that tension, to examine what Robert 
Heilman calls the "moral doubleness" or ambiguity which arises from the 
conflicting moral, legal, and cultural attitudes in the West. 30 Owen 
Wister raised the subject but did not really coIIE to grips with the prob-
lem. He drew out little or no anguish on the part of his characters and 
he saw no tragedy in the acceptance of lynch law. He failed to recognize 
the implications of the questions he had raised, and because of this fail-
ure, The Virginian did not make the bold step into literature; rather it 
gave rise to one of the strongest fornD.llas in the Western tradition, the 
use of an outlaw or extra-legal means to accomplish good. 
The forJIIllla was not upset until 1940 when .Walter Van Tilburg Clark 
wrote The Oxbow Incident. Clark presented the dilemma of moral ambigui-
ties and the problem of conflicting value systems in the West. He 
defined sharply the tension inherent in the interface between civiliza-
tion and nature by pointing out that obedience to one form of law often 
brought about the tragic consequences of violating a different code of 
law. In rejecting the usual themes of progress and success, Clark dis-
covered tragedy in the West, a quality previously all but ignored in 
western writing. 
Success and achievement have always been the keynotes of western 
29
wallace Stegner, "History, Myth and the Western Writer," The 
American West, IV (May 1967), p. 77. 
30Robert Heilman, "The Western Theme," Northwest Review, IV (Fall/ 
Winter 1960), p. 10. 

15 
fiction, and there has been what Robert Heilman notes "an excess of 
triumph. 1131 He postulates that "western materials are simply defective 
in the tragic component, that they are too exclusively a melodrama of 
victory." Heilman goes on to say that there has been "no all-encompass-
ing tension and destruction and fight for physical and moral survival. 1132 
Yet beginning with Clark's The Oxbow Incident, western writers have 
increasingly turned to examine the human struggle with human problems. 
Writers have begun to reject the narrow heritage of unqualified success 
and progress and to probe instead the vagaries and conflicting passions 
of human endeavor. As Neal Lambert writes, western literature must focus 
on the essential theme of "man alone or in small groups working out the 
problems of his own humanity in the context of a landscape that is vast, 
unsettled, and uncivilized. 1133 Heilman, too, claims that western authors 
must seek out the tragic human errors inherent in the western experience 
in order to develop literature and art; they must develop an awareness 
not only of the victory, but of the cost of the victory, 
or of the failure in apparent victory; of the ambiguities 
of earning and learning; of the moral hazard, of the moral 
doubleness; of the oblique motive or the evil deed in the 
very fabric of pure intent, the struggle, the strenuous 
search.34 
Traditionally western fiction has recognized only physical losses 
as tragic, the loss of crops, cabins, livestock, or family. All but 
ignored have been the losses of indigenous cultures and alternative 
31Levi S. Peterson, "Tragedy and Western American Literature," 
Western American Literature, VI (1971 ), p. 243; Heilman, p. 9. 
32H ·1 9 10 e1 man, pp. - . 
33 Lambert, p. 29 . 
34H · 1 10 e1 man, p. . 

16 
world-views; rarely mentioned is the loss in human spirit in the clash 
between the wilderness and civilization. New Westerns Imlst question the 
qua._l~ty of the civilization which supplanted the wilderness and do so in 
the light of the native structures that were superseded. New Westerns 
must assess whether the change brought progress, and they Imlst make a 
judgement whether the arrival of civilization was good or evii. 35 New 
Westerns tm1st impose a moral force on the western experience, rather than 
just chronicle the action or perpetuate the romantic stereotypes. In so 
doing, New Westerns can probe the ambiguity, the tension, of the western 
experience and arrive at an assessment of the self-contradictory ideals 
associated with the West of the imagination. The elements of tragedy 
tm1st necessarily be tied to the questions such an assessment requires. 
Frederick Jackson Turner's frontier thesis may have fallen into 
disrepute among most historians, but tm1ch of what he saw in the American 
frontier is inseparable from the traditions of the West, and thus it 
remains fecund material for literature. Wallace Stegner is certainly 
reacting to Turner's frontier characteristics when he writes of his "sad-
ness at what our civilization does to the natural, free, and beautiful, 
to the noble, the self-reliant, the brave.1136 Yet the freedom, independ-
ence, and self-reliance that Stegner sees as having been destroyed were 
themselves at odds with the corrnmmitarian, non-linear world-view of the 
Indian and the wilderness. But more important for western literature, 
those qualities mourned by Stegner were also at odds with the social 
35 . 
James K. Folsom, The American Western Novel (New Haven, 1966), 
pp. 31, 155; Gurian, pp. 130, 9; Dodds, p. 362. 
36 Stegner, "History, Myth," p. 77; Stegner, Sound, p. 147; Gurian, 
p. 120. 

17 
values of the civilization that moved in behind the pioneers. Yet Ameri-
cans tend to affirm at the same time the traditions of individualism and 
the traditions of democratic settlement, both of which grow out of the 
western experience. 37 What a New Western novelist Im.1st do is explore 
the nature of the contradictions in the traditions of the West, while at 
the same time the novelist Im.1st use those very traditions as his mater-
ial. John Milton claims that one of the primary problems western liter-
ature has had in the past is the fact that "because the West is relatively 
new in terms of culture and social organization, the novelist Im.1st in a 
sense create or locate the traditions he wishes to use, and he Im.1st do so 
38 
at the very same time that he uses them." In doing so, the novelist 
Im.1st take care that the identification of a tradition does not overshadow 
the evaluation of the tradition. The New Western Im.1st not only recreate 
the West, but also come to terms with it. 
In his critique of the New Western, The Return of the Vanishing 
American, Leslie Fiedler maintains that the West Im.1st symbolize a move-
ment toward the future, and it Im.1st therefore reflect renewal not nostal-
gia, rebirth not re-creation. He concludes that. hallucinating is the 
opposite of remembering, so New Westerns Im.1st move into mind-expansion 
39 
and madhouses. This argument ignores a major body of tradition in the 
West, namely: the constant attempts to escape constraints of society, to 
press into a primitive environment, to return to an individual relation-
ship with nature, in essence to re-create the pre-civilized past. To 
37Folsom, p. 136; Gurian, pp. 5-6; Lambert, p. 31. 
38Milton, "The Novel in the American West," p. 78. 
39Fiedler, pp. 175-7, 

18 
reject this tradition of the West is to fail to grasp the total signifi-
cance of the West, especially in its relevance to New Westerns. In what 
Jay -Gurian calls a "post-civilized't state of mind, contemporary society 
is able to view nature and wilderness without an overwhelming need to 
conquer it, thus we are in a position to assess the true effects of the 
wilderness in the western experience. Novelists can go back to the val-
ues perceived to be Indian, and therefore in tune with nature, and use 
those values to illuminate the progress or lack thereof in modern civil-
. t· 40 1za ion. Iri the West re-creation becomes identified with rebirth and 
cannot be neatly separated as Fiedler suggests. Both are integral to 
the tension inherent in the western experience. 
The New Western is not Fiedler's hallucination; it is more than 
Folsom's search along the landscape of the soul; it is more than Etulain's 
good characterization within a western setting; it is more than Stegner's 
return to heroic virtues; it is more than Gurian's probe of today's moral 
decay in terms of the old West; and it is more than Lee's first-hand 
experience. All of these critics shed light on the New Western, but each 
fails to come to terms with the historical nature of the New Western. 41 
The role of the western novelist becomes the role of the histori-
cal novelist. Because western literature is young, and because western 
traditions are often contradictory or poorly defined, the western novel-
ist finds it necessary to explore the past to find patterns for the 
40 . Gurian, p. ix; Folsom, p. 158. 
41Fiedler, p. 177; Folsom, p. 32; Richard W. Etulain, "The New 
Novel,n Idaho Yesterdays, 15 (Winter 1972), p. 12; Stegner, "History, 
Myth, rt p. 78; Gurian, p. 130; Lee, p. 156. 

19 
present and traditions for literatur e. The novelist IID.lst attempt to 
bring western materials under control and find the form inherent in those 
materials, rather than impose a form (or forililllas) from without. Such a 
task is historical in its very nature; it Ilillst study the past to find 
form and tradition and to illuminate the impact of the past on the pres-
ent. Thus Vardis Fisher approached his western materials by asking what 
42 part of today is yesterday. Wallace Stegner calls for a search of the 
past for a continuity with the present. Such a course is necessary 
because the real western past "has been mythicized almost out of recog-
nizability" and the real western present seems "cut-off and pointless , 1143 
The New Western novel, then, IID.lst carry the burden of identifying 
the traditions of the western experience as well as the burden of using 
those traditions to forge a western literature. In the process the 
novel IID.lst evaluate the contradictory nature of those traditions and dis-
card the romantic, devitalized, and stereotyped notions that have hereto-
fore rigidly isolated the western experience from serious scrutiny. 
Like any good regional writing, New Western novels IID.lst spring from 
within the region and IIIllst reflect its uniqueness, yet they IID.lst also 
embody a strand of universality beyond the region, The plots, the scenes, 
and even the characters IIIllst be regionally authentic, but the passions, 
the probing into humanity's foibles, and the moral dilennnas IIIllst transcend 
the region. Great literature is regional literature before it is 
42vardis Fisher, "The Novelist and his Background," .Western Folk-
lore, 12 (January 1953), p. 4. 
43 · Stegner, "History, Myth," p. 79. 
~ 
~1 
IJj 
:·:l "' 
IA 

. al 44 un1vers . Commenting on regional ism, T. Frank Dobie writes that 
writers Imlst "always be listening to the rhythms of their living places" 
but- regionalism is actually only a framework on which to hang universal 
45 truths. Joseph B. Harrison and Joseph K. Howard shared the same view-
20 
point at the Conference of Writers on the Northwest held at Reed College 
in 1947. Harrison advised that regionalism may provide an author a com-
fortable setting, but it "IIn.1st manifest its place in the scheme of things 
entire." Howard connnented that "the true concept of regionalism encom-
passes study of ~ne's neighbors, the physical features of one's environ-
ment, and the area's historical tradition, with intent to make a worth-
while intellectual contribution to the welfare of the nation or the 
46 
world." 
Since New Westerns, insofar as they aspire to be called literature 
as they do, Imlst probe the themes and traditions of the western experi-
ence, it follows that New Westerns will be predominantly historical, for 
the literary materials spring from the historical, regional past. Because 
of this, New Westerns are of interest to historians seeking new ways to 
interpret the West. A problem arises for the historian concerning the 
use to which historical literature may be put. Is there a place for 
44Milton, "The Novel in the American West," p. 78; Charles Caldwell 
Dobie, "Literature on the Pacific Coast," American Writers on American 
Literature, ed. John Macy (New York, 1934), p. 414. 
45T. Frank Dobie, "The Writer and his Region," Southwest Review, 59 
(1974), p. 428. 
46Joseph B. Harrison, "Regionalism is not enough," Northwest Harvest: 
A Regional Stocktaking, ed. V. L. 0. Chittick (New York, 1948), p. 147; 
Joseph K. Howard, "Culture, Climate, and Corrnm.mity," Northwest Harvest 
p. 119. 
~ 
"'l ,11 
:~' 
"'l .. 1

21 
historical fiction, and in particul ar western historical fiction, in the 
study of history? Should the historian reject historical fiction as too 
subjective for the study of objective history or can the thoughts and 
emotions distilled from history by fiction have a value that reaches 
beyond subjectivity? If the historical novel does have a place in the 
study of history, on what basis should it be judged by the historian? 
Factual content? Thematic purpose? Literary merit? Ideally all three, 
for as Wallace Stegner says, "The trick lfor the historical novelis.:!} is 
to make the twin cutting tools of sound research and a sense of the dra-
matic work together like scissors blades. ,.47 · The drama m1st flow from 
the documents themselves, an all too rare occurrence in the writings of 
historians. One critic maintained that "academic historians ... con-
ceive it to be their duty to relate minutely exactly what occurred, not 
48 to make judgements of value." In other words, historians spoil a good 
story. The critic went on to say that the historical novelist "IIIl.lst give 
a true picture of the mind of the past, besides an accurate record of 
49 public events." A. B. Guthrie claims to seek his universal truths in 
the history itself and to recreate the historical problems in a fictional 
setting.so Thus it would seem fair to judge the merits of historical 
47
wallace Stegner, "On the Writing of History," Western Writing, ed. 
Gerald W. Haslam (Albuquerque, 1974), p. 26. 
4811Fictional History," Times Literary Supplement, Nov. 3, 1961, p.789. 
49Ibid. 
SO A. B. Guthrie, "The Historical Novel," Western Writings, ed. Gerald 
W. Haslam (Albuquerque, 1974), pp. 57-8. 

fiction on the accuracy of its reflection of the factual record and the 
veracity with which it elicits the themes and traditions of history. 
22 
Historical fiction Im1st do more than that, however, for competently 
written history records facts, themes, and traditions . . The novelist IIlllst 
go beyond the actions and memoirs of the period of his setting; he IIlllst 
retrieve the emotions and passions, the sensations felt by the characters 
in response to the environment and actions. The author needs to create 
characters that are full, individual, and believable, and through them he 
needs to construct a morally sound and aesthetically pleasing work of art. 51 
The historical novelist can neglect neither the literary nor the historical 
aspects of his craft. Helen Cam has called for exacting standards to judge 
the historical novel, writing "it may be a hybrid ... but we are surely 
entitled to demand that a historical novel be both good literature and 
good history. 115 2 
The place of historic literature, that is, the literature produced 
during the period Wlder study, is assured in the study of history, for it 
is a part of that historical period as IIlllch as any legal or economic fact. 
Historical fiction however is the product of a later period, viewing the 
past from a distance. Since its primary purpose is to perform a literary 
· 53 function, it produces a portrait of the past rather than a photograph. 
It is for this very reason that many historians reject historical fiction 
51 . 
Jackson K. Putnam, "Down to Earth: A. B. Guthrie's Quest for 
Moral and Historical Truth," Essays on Western History, ed. Robert P. 
Wilkins (Grand Forks, 1970), p. 61. 
52Helen Cam, Historical Novels (London, 1961), p. 295. 
5
~elson M. Blake, Novelists' America: Fiction as History (Syracuse, 
1969), p. 4. 

23 
in the study of history; but to do so is to reject a valuable probe into 
the past, for as Thoreau accurately points out, "when out of history the 
truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered 
leaves. 1154 The purpose of historical fiction is to evoke the past to 
reveal a truth about humanity or a truth about ourselves. The novelist 
uses history as a tool, and he should not be bound tightly to the writ-
ten record. On the other hand, he Illllst be bound tightly to the traditions 
of the past, to the emotions of the past, to the 'feelings' of the past, 
The novelist Illllst operate within the constraints of the historical setting 
and the historical pattern he has chosen, but he is also charged to pro-
duce a literary fiction. The novelist is not bound completely by the 
facts, but should he ignore or twist the historical record too Illllch, he 
will lose the illusion of history and with it the experience of the moment. 
The historical novelist who is successful in his efforts will create a 
believable past with believable characters, and he will promote an under-
. standing of the human and historical experience. 55 If the historical 
novelist succeeds, his work has a definite place in the study of history, 
not to learn about the facts of a given period but to learn about the 
spirit, the traditions, and the human experience of that period. 
54Henry David Thoreau, Week on the Merrimac and Concord Rivers, 
cited in Fiedler, p. 114. 
55Hervey Allen, "History and the Novel," Atlantic Monthly (Feb. 
1944), pp. 119-20; Lambert, pp. 29-30; Blake, pp. 111, 262; Don D. 
Walker, "The Western Explorer as Literary Hero," Western Humanities 
Review, XXIX (Sunnner 1975), p. 247. 

24 
II. DON BERRY AND TRASK 
One of the best of the 'New Western' novelists is Don Berry, a 
writer of the Northwest whose three historical novels Trask (1960), 
Moontrap (1962), and To Build a Ship (1963), probe the traditions, spirit, 
and experience of early Oregon. Although Berry limits his plots to the 
Northwest, his novels are actually IIll.lCh broader in scope, encompassing 
ideas more generally associated with the West as a whole. The themes of 
movement, struggle, and tension; the impact of the environment on man and 
man on the land; the clash of value systems and ideas of law; the defini-
tion and use of historical traditions; all are a part of the 'New Western' 
and all are a part of Berry's novels. At the same time, however, the 
novels all emerge from the rhythms of the Northwest, IID.1.ch the way A. B. 
Guthrie's works derive out of the broad landscape of Montana. As a group, 
Berry's three novels Imlst be considered among the best yet produced in 
the literary tradition of the West, standing among or above the works of 
H. L. Davis, A. B. Guthrie, Wallace Stegner, Paul Horgan, Vardis Fisher, 
or Walter Van Tilburg Clark. Berry's novels arise from local history to 
emerge as successful literature, grappling with the problem of man's place 
in the universe while retaining contact with their earthy origins. 
Don Berry was born in Redwood Falls, Minnesota, in 1932, and grew up 
travelling around the country with his Illl.lsician parents. At the age of 
15, he embarked on a literary apprenticeship by writing science fiction 
under a pseudonym, selling his first story after 144 rejections. Although 
never garnering any formal training in history, he became intrigued with 
~ 
~ 
( 
0 
I 
I 
I 
j 

25 
it after reading a research paper by historian Dorothy Johansen concerning 
the Tillamook Indian land claims. She described an incident involving 
Elbridge Trask and said nobody had ever been able to explain why he had 
acted as he had; Berry recalled his reaction later: "I thought, well I 
know why he did that. That's what I would have done. That mom.en t, 
which I didn't recognize at the time, but that moment was the first time 
that I ever realized that history ... had a bunch of guys like me that had 
done something that somebody had written down. 1156 
Four books gre_w out of Berry's involvement in historical writing, 
the three novels and an informal but well-researched history of the Rocky 
Mountain Fur Company, A Majority of Scoundrels (1961). A fourth novel, a 
sequel to Trask in an intended trilogy, was withdrawn from the publisher 
and destroyed by Berry. In all his novels, Berry managed to grasp the 
flavor of the historical period in question and to breathe life into the 
characters he either created or used. In the process of so doing, Berry 
adapted the historical record to his own purposes to some extent. 
Like all of the 'New Western' novelists, Berry has more than just 
a story to tell, yet he has the obligation of all writers to research and 
present accurately the themes, traditions, and events around which his 
story is woven. In writing historical fiction, an author can more easily 
control the descriptive background of the story, and, with it, the state 
of the reader's mind. In a contemporary novel, the reader can identify 
himself with the situation, and thus confound the thoughts the author is 
trying to present. In a historical setting, the author can remove the 
56 Doug Shaeffer, "Interview with Don Berry," (Spring, 1974); bio-
graphical information from Glen Love, "Interview with Don Berry, 11· (May, 1977). 

26 
story from the everyday experience of the reader, and thus concentrate 
the reader's attention on what is written. As Berry told one interviewer, 
ad 1 h 1157 "Trask never h a c utc go out. A historical setting removes the 
reader from his own reality and focuses his attention on the human events 
in the story as presented by the writer. The success of such a mechanism 
depends upon the accuracy with which the author portrays the past, for if 
the author distorts the setting or makes errors in portrayals of histori-
cal characters, the reader's attention may be diverted, or, worse, the 
reader may reject the novel out of hand. Thus, the historical novelist 
must research the arena in which he will work in order to be able to cre-
ate the setting without making the reader uncomfortable about its accuracy, 
At the same time, however, the novelist is presenting a pattern of 
events that are important to his message, events that are not necessarily 
historical in nature, The characters, with their accompanying thoughts, 
emotions, and actions, are fictional, as is the plot of the novel in most 
cases. Yet the characters must square with the historical record, as well 
as the literary function they perform. The situation calls for the use of 
history within the framework of literature, as well as the use of litera-
ture within the confines of history. 
Such a situation lays open the potential for abuse of history 
instead of the careful use of it. A novelist may succeed in a literary 
sense, but he may do so at the expense of historical accuracy. If such 
is the case, if the novelist has abused the historical record--whether it 
be by warping events to fit the story to such an extent as to distort 
57 Shaeffer "Interview." 

27 
seriously "wie es eigentlich gewesen," or whether it be by recasting the 
motives, thoughts, and actions of an actual historical person in such a 
manner as to render that person incompatible with his historical counter-
part--then the novel Im.1st as surely fail as historical fiction and, more 
generally, as literature. The historical novelist Im.1st succeed twice, 
in history and in literature, in order to produce a single successful 
historical novel. 
A 'New Western' novelist Im.1st strive to control an accurate his-
torical setting, create plausible and timely characters, and probe the · 
traditions, emotions, and patterns of the past. If he is successful, the 
result will provide regional authenticity and universal connnent on the 
human condition. By accurately identifying the western traditions, and 
then by coming to terms with them through probing their moral ambiguities, 
the 'New Western' novelist provides insight into the growth and progress, 
or lack thereof, of western man. 
In his novels, Don Berry investigates the tergiversations of social 
and cultural laws in settings where two cultures or societies are in con-
flict. Although each novel is a very personal exploration of his own 
soul, Berry also provides insight into the traditions of the past, whether 
real or ieythical. At all times Berry is conscious of the costs of change, 
of progress, of victory, as the Northwest was opened to white settlement. 
His novels are both a celebration of the human spirit and a conderrmation 
of the restraints placed on that .spirit by society. He ponders the values 
of Frederick Jackson Turner's American character traits within the settings 
of cultural and social conflict: Indian and white, frontiersman and set-
tler; independence and social responsibility, self-reliance and comrrnmity 

28 
interdependence. 
The problem for the historian is to evaluate the 'New Western' 
novels to determine whether the author has performed a service or disser-
vice in identifying the forces and events that produce historical and 
literary traditions. Has Don Berry used or abused the historical record 
in developing his novels? Do the fictional characters evolve from an 
accurate sense of the period? Do the historical characters, appearing in 
fictional form, reflect their counterparts in history? If deviations from 
the record do in fact arise, are they serious enough to undermine the 
validity of the judgements Berry makes, or can his novelistic analysis of 
the western experience be sufficiently accurate and useful despite changes 
in the historical materials? These questions are central to the value of 
historical fiction in the study of history. Departures from objective 
factual information, such as dates, may not significantly alter the value 
of a novel, whereas an inaccurate portrayal of a historical character or 
an erroneous depiction of an ambient mood may do irreparable damage to the 
reliability of the novelist's analysis. While Elbridge Trask may be 
relieved of his children, while Dr. John McLaughlin's house may be located 
incorrectly, and while the isolation of Tillamook Bay may be overstated, 
do these alterations in fact impugn the validity qf Berry's probe into the 
Northwest's heritage? On the other hand, subjective judgements concerning 
moods, motives, and emotions of the past are vital parts of the fictional 
approach to history, and novelists IIll.lst certainly retain the freedom to 
interpret history in their own way. Should not these interpretations be 
in accordance with recorded events, however, and if they are not, what is 
the effect on the novel's historical validity? Don Berry connnented at one 

29 
time concerning Trask that he "made whatever departures from history best 
suited my purposes."58 Berry considers history to be a tool for his writ-
ing, as a structure for a coherent idea, not as an absolute chiseled in 
stone. To the extent that history is objective, it is useful for control-
ling the scene of action; but to the extent that history is subjective, 
Berry sees the novelist's interpretation as no less valid than the his-
torian's. He uses his writing like a "focusing lens" to burn away the 
surface of the past to reveal the "meaning of the experience that lies 
behind." 
I don't worry an awful lot about .deviation from history 
unless dealing with actual facts, because history itself 
is the fiction that historians write. They too look at 
the data and look at the facts, but they invent their own 
picture because there is nothing else they can do. 59 
Yet care IIIllst be taken that the departures and deviations do not distort 
the time and place of which the author writes. Do the departures in 
Trask suit the purposes of historical interpretation as well as they suit 
Berry's literary interpretation? 
Don Berry's first novel is perhaps his most successful novel from 
the point of view of historical fiction, for Trask presents a situation 
and series of events that are highly plausible. Berry has provided an 
excellent recreation of the setting of the Oregon coast and of the settle-
ment on the Clatsop Plains. Beyond this, however, Berry has also drawn 
heavily on Indian traditions and folklore. In the process, he has pre-
sented various thematic aspects of the West, probing and evaluating the 
58 Don Berry, "Cormnent by the Author," Saturday Review (March 5, 
1960), p. 17. 
59 Shaeffer, "Interview." 

30 
merits and demerits of the western experience: . the restless impulse, the 
personal struggle against the elements and the unlmown, and the tense 
clash between the encroaching white civilization and the native cultures. 
Yet Trask succeeds equally as an adventure story and as a personal search 
for one's identity. It is as a historical novel set in the West, however, 
that it draws the attention of historians. 
From the very first page of the novel, Don Berry establishes in the 
reader's mind that this is no bit of fluff, but rather that it is a part 
of the historical record. Using an excerpt from the journal of a well-
known mountain man turned settler, Berry sets up his plot. Drawn "from 
the later journals of Osborne Russell, 1845-1857," the excerpt indicates 
that 
there is some "Dam Fool 11· of a white man has got himself 
into trouble with the Killamooks down at the coast, which 
have a prety hard reputation. And who shd it turn out to 
be but my old Comrade Elbridge Trask that I free-trapped 
with out of Fort Hall. Well I am not surprised any but 
hope he does not get himself killd which wd be Just like him. 
He was the most restless man I ever knew .... 0 
Elbridge Trask is restless and vaguely uncomfortable with his situ-
ation on Clatsop Plains in the Spring of 1848. Unable to explain to his 
wife Hannah exactly how he feels, he decides to pay a call on his old 
friend Solomon Smith who lives with his Clatsop wife, Celiast, near the 
village of Neahcoxie. Almost unconsciously he asks Smith what he knows 
of Murderer's Harbor, which is SO miles to the south along the coast. 
Smith tells him that it lies in Killam.oak country, and the Killamooks and 
60 Don Berry, Trask (New York, 1960); for convenience, all page 
citations will be included in the text and refer to the Comstock Edition 
(Sausalito, California, 1969). 

31 
the Clatsops do not see eye to eye. In fact the Killamooks seem not to 
see eye to eye with many people, for Smith tells Trask that he walked 
mighty carefully some years back when he was through the area. Celiast 
recalls the story of Captain Robert Gray's crewmember being killed when 
his ship put into the bay, giving the area its threatening name, and she 
adds that the tyee is not favorable to the idea of whites coming down to 
settle in his country. Furthermore the trail, if it could be called a 
trail at all, IIIl.lst cross Neahkahnie, a huge hump-backed mountain that 
juts out into the ocean. Smith tells Trask, "Bridge, there are places 
you have to cross on that mountain where the trail is no wider than a 
man's two hands. Tilted like a roof, sliding shale--and if you slip it's 
five hundred damn feet straight down into the sea." If that were not 
enough, Neahkahnie is thought by the Indians to be the body of the god 
Kahnie turned to stone, and it serves as the dividing line between the 
Clatsops and the Killamooks; either of which facts would make most if not 
all Clatsops refuse to guide Trask down to Murderer's Harbor. 
Trask is determined to scout the country, however, and within a few 
days he starts south, guided by Charley Kehwa, the tamanawis man or 
shaman of the Clatsop Indians, whose spiritual powers discomfort Trask. 
Accompanying them are Wakila and Doctor McLaughlin; the former a young 
Clatsop ravaged by the vices of two cultures and without the benefits of 
either, and the latter a hip-shot mountain pony that proves surprisingly 
nimble, Progress down the coast is agonizingly slow, for they have to 
cut their own trail through the dense growth of briar and salal as they 
cross a series of headlands. A bond develops between Trask and Charley 
as they begin to respect each other, and Wakila gains a sense of self-
respect as he is given responsibility by Trask. But Neahkahnie, home of 

32 
the fire spirit Kahnie who created the waves by throwing red-hot rocks 
into the ocean, Neahkahnie proves to be a formidable obstacle. As Wakila 
gingerly leads the horse along the edge of a gravelly precipice, Doctor 
slips and pulls the youth to his death on the rocks below. At Charley 
Kehwa's request, Trask joins the medicine man's grief by cutting off his 
own forelock for Him-who-died. 
The two now proceed down the south side of Neahkahnie to a small 
village of the Nehalems, the northernmost band of the Killamooks. There 
they receive a cool welcome from the leader, who engages Trask in a com-
petitive potlatch, attempting to humiliate the white man before the gath-
ered band. Through the cleverness of Charley Kehwa, Trask emerges 
triumphant. Their safe exit is assured when Charley reveals that he is 
a tamanawis man and threatens to shrivel the manhood of any who would 
harm them. 
Camping along the beach just north of Murderer's Harbor, Trask and 
Charley are captured and escorted into the main village of the Killamooks. 
The principle tyee, rumored to be a black man, is not present, but the 
lineal chief, Illga, tries to enlist their aid in overthrowing his rival. 
Preferring to wait and deal with Kilchis, Trask declines Illga's offer, 
thereby engendering the Indian's deep hatred. 
When Kilchis returns from a trip to the Nestucca area where he had 
been sunnnoned to settle a dispute, he negotiates with Trask concerning 
the latter's desire to settle in the bay. Trask manages to convince 
Kilchis that a gradual controlled settlement is preferable to war with 
the whites, but when the plan is presented to the council, Illga steps 
forward. The Killamooks should not treat with Trask, for he is not a man; 

33 
he has not gone on the Searching for a guardian spirit, without which no 
one is a man. Against the advice of Charley Kehwa, Trask agrees to under-
take the Searching, despite the fact that it is early in the year and he 
has had no preparation for it. 
Armed with a torch and blanket, Trask strides off into the moun-
tains, there to remain, fasting, until he perishes or receives the power 
of a Vision. After incredible hardship, he hears a person approaching. 
He assumes it is Illga or a cohort, for Charley had warned him that the 
vengeful Killamook might try to kill him on the Searching. Trask hides, 
then lunges at the dark figure, thrusting a rude spear through the small 
body, only to discover it is Charley coming to help him. In a delirious 
state and weak from injury and hunger, Trask manages to carry the Clatsop 
back to the Killamook village, urged on by the voice of the dead tamanawis 
man. Trask's absence of fear of death and dead men demonstrates to the 
Killamooks a powerful Vision, and a strong spirit helper. The novel 
closes as Trask recognizes his unity with the world around him and rejects 
the rapacious lust for possession of the land that had driven him to Mur-
.derer's Harbor to begin with. 

III. HISTORICAL B<\CKGROUND 
From the outset, Trask seems to be a filled out version of an 
actual historical story. In a connnent accompanying a review of the book 
in Saturday Review, Berry claimed to have fleshed out the connective 
tissue between isolated and seemingly unrelated bits of information, _ in 
a manner reminiscent of what Washington Irving used to call adding 'fil-
l • I 61 1gree. The characters not only ring true, but most are based on 
actual persons; anyone with a working lmowledge of Oregon history ma.y 
easily recognize Solomon Smith, the former teacher at Fort Vancouver, 
34 
with his wife Celiast; Trask himself filed one of the first claims in 
Tillamook Bay and appeared, albeit somewhat briefly, in Osborne Russell's 
journal of his trapping days; Kilchis and Illga were the two chiefs of 
the Killamooks when the whites began to settle the area, and Kilchis was 
an enormous black man; the settlement of Tillamook Bay was a peaceful and 
reasonably orderly one; and the Killamook Indians had enjoyed a "hard rep-
utation"· from when Lopeus of Captain Gray's crew had been killed at their 
hands in 1788. Given the outline in history, the novelist need only 
heighten the drama, draw out the characterizations, recreate an authentic 
setting, and Trask would be complete, The only question that might arise 
for the reader would be how likely it is that Trask would have gone down 
to scout out the country a full four years before he actually moved down 
to file a claim. But Berry supplies Osborne Russell's words in his 
61 Berry, "Comment,'.' p. 17; see also Pierre Irving (ed.), The Life 
and Letters of Washington Irving, vol. II, p. 302, cited in Lee, p. 68. 

35 
journals to assure the reader that Trask was inde~d in the area. 
To create an effective historical novel, an author IID.lst convey the 
reader to the historic period of the setting, not just through recreating 
the physical surroundings (although this is important) but also through 
attaching the plot to actual events, movements, and people of the period. 
One of the most important bits of information in anchoring Trask to the 
frame of history, and thus affirming possibility and plausibility of the 
plot for the reader, is the April 29, 1848 journal entry of Osborne 
Russell establishing that Elbridge Trask was indeed among the Killamooks. 
With a unique flair Don Berry has created an illusion with an illu-
sion: the journal entry is a fake. No "later journals of Osborne Russell, 
1845-1857" exist. 62 Certainly Berry uses other historical pegs on which 
to hang the story, but the fabricated journal entry somehow seems to set 
the tone for the reader, a quiet reminder that Berry may be telling the 
truth and that the reader should ponder the implications of this probe 
into the past. 
Don Berry did not fabricate everything in his book, however, rather 
he used factual material extensively. For the most part, the characters 
in the book are based on real persons, with the noteworthy exception of 
Charley Kehwa, a fitting exception since his role -is more of a spiritual 
6
~ot only are there no later journals, Osborne Russell was not in 
the Yamhill District in April, 1848. He .was on his claim at the Luckiamute 
Falls in Polk County, where he signed a power of attorney to James Neall 
to sell his first journal to a publisher back East. Don Berry confirmed 
his fabrication of the entry in a letter to Dr. Glen Love, University of 
Oregon, in July, 1977. See E. Ruth Rockwood, "Diary of Rev. George H. 
Atkinson, D. D., 1847-1858, rt Oregon Historical Quarterly, XL (1939), p. 350; 
Ja.n:Es Neall, A Downeaster in the Far West, ed. Martin Schmitt and K. Keith 
Richard, (Ashland, 1977), pp. 32, 39-40. 

one than any other. Several of the events· are drawn from diaries and 
reminiscences of pioneers on the coast. The setting on the Clatsop 
Plains is well based on fact. Most of all, Berry has researched thor-
oughly his material on the culture of the coast Indians. The customs, 
beliefs, and viewpoints of the Indians in Trask are, with a few small 
exceptions, accurate portrayals of historical and anthropological evi-
dence of those cultures. 
36 
Like his fictional counterpart, Elbridge Trask was a thirty-three 
year old transplanted New Englander, having been born in Beverly, Massa-
63 
chusetts, on July 15, 1815. In 1833 he signed on as a sailor with Cap-
tain Lambert of the "May Dacre" and arrived in the Columbia River in 
September, 1834. After a trip to the Sandwich Islands that winter and a 
summer doing odd jobs around Fort William, Trask joined Nathaniel Wyeth's 
Columbia River Fishing and Trading Company on September 30, 1835, as a 
trapper for the wages of sixteen dollars a month. 64 · On his way back East 
to pursue a more profitable line of work, Wyeth released all his trappers 
from their contracts in the surmner of 1836. 65 
Trask became a free trapper, generally working out of the Fort Hall 
area. By 1838 he had joined up with Osborne Russell, and the two were 
more or less constant companions until they left the fur trade four years 
63 Osborne Russell, Journal of a Trapper, ed. Aubrey L. Haines, 
(Portland, 1955), p. 96; Genealogical Forum, Genealogical Material in 
Oregon Land Claims Abstracted from Applications (Portland, 1957), vol. II, 
p. 73. 
64Richard G. Beidleman, "Nathaniel Wyeth's Fort Hall," Oregon His-
torical Quarterly, LVIII (1959), p. 237n . . 
65H· h" Th ( iram M. C 1ttenden, e American Fur Trade of the Far West New 
York, 1935), vol. I, p. 452. 

37 
later. Russell described Trask as "being bred a sailor" and therefore 
•tnot IIlllch of a landsman, woodsman or hunter. 1166 When Trask became sepa-
rated from Russell and two o~her trappers during a Blackfoot attack in 
August, 1839, they were unable to locate him, so they proceeded to Fort 
Hall without him. Despite a serious arrow wound in the right leg and 
hip, Russell managed to get to Fort Hall in seven days without horses or, 
for the most part, food. Xrask, uninjured, did not show up for another 
nine days, having wandered lost until he happened upon a recent trail 
which pointed out the direction of the fort. 67 The next year Russell 
commented on Trask's judgement, or lack thereof, when Trask wanted to go 
buffalo hunting; Russell vetoed the idea because the horses were far too 
weak for such a strenuous activity. 68 On another occasion shortly after 
the Blackfoot attack, Russell declined to accompany Trask on a trip up 
to the Yellowstone Mountains, saying that he intended to trap "with a 
party who would not leave me . in a 'pinch.' 11 ·69 Despite Russell's misgiv-
ings about Trask's abilities in the woods, however, the two men stayed 
together for the most part. 
By November of 1841, over a year after the last Rendezvous, Russell 
was able to see the approaching end of the fur trade. As he put his jour-
nal into order for publication later and looked back on that autUillll, he 
wrote 
66 Russell, p. 98. 
67Ibid., pp. 103-9. 
68Ibid. , p. 111. 
69Ibid. 

In the year 1836 large bands of buffalo could be seen 
in almost every little valley on the small branches of 
this stream. At this time the only traces of them which 
could be seen were the scattered bones of those which 
had been killed. Their deeply indented trails which had 
been made in former years were overgrown with grass and 
weeds. The trappers often remarked to each other as they 
rode over these lonely plains that it was time for the 
white man to leave the mountains, as beaver and game 
had nearly disappeared.70 
38 
The following summer, Russell, Trask, and a few other trappers 
decided to say quits to the fur trade. Some like Alfred Shutes went back 
East to their original homes; others like Russell and Trask determined 
to start new lives in a new country, and headed west to the Willamette 
· Valley. On August 22nd Trask left Fort Hall with Russell in the company 
fEl .. ahWh. and :al . tf ·1· 71 I ldd. th o · 1J 1te sever. enugran ami 1es. nc u e 1n e group 
were William T. Perry, his wife Ann, and her widowed sister, Hannah Abel. 
Hannah had left two small daughters with relatives in Indiana but had 
brought along her most recent child, Rosaltha. 72 
Proceeding from Fort Hall the group attached itself to a Hudson' s 
Bay brigade and moved on ahead of the remainder of emigrants. Earlier in 
the trip White had become somewhat of a persona .!!.Q!l grata for the manner 
in which he directed the operation, and undoubtedly he wished to arrive 
70Ibid., p. 124. 
71Ibid., p. 125. 
· 
72Bethenia Owens-Adair, Some of her Life Experiences (Portland, 
1921), p. 234; Genealogical Material, vol. II, p. 73, vol. III, p. 12. 
Rosaltha had been born 22 July 1841 and the other two children were 
Sarah (b. 11 April 1838) and Elizabeth (b. 4 January 1840); see Elizabeth 
Vaughn Landis MS, Trask File, Tillamook County Pioneer Museum (n.d., n.p.). 

39 
in Oregon ahead of his detractors. 73 Shortly a£ter the group reached 
Oregon City and a£ter what Illl.lst have been an unusual courtship, Elbridge 
Trask married Hannah Abel on October 20, 1842. The new Trask family 
wintered in Oregon City with the Perrys in a hastily constructed house. 74 
In the spring of 1843 Trask moved his family to Clatsop Plains, 
along with the Perrys, the Thomas Owens family, Henry Hunt, Ben Wood, and 
N. A. Ebennan, the latter three being interested in constructing a sawmill 
on the Plains. 75 Trask hired on to help build the mill, and two years 
later he was involved in the construction of a grist mill on Ohanna Creek 
along with Perry, Owens, and Calvin Tibbetts, a former Wyeth man who had 
come overland in 1832. 76 During 1844, Trask engaged himself to work on a 
county road along the crest of the dunes bordering Clatsop Plains on the 
77 
west. By 1846 Trask had been hired by the Hudson's Bay Company to till 
up some lands for planting, but as Alexander Lattie noted in his journal 
73 F. G, Young, ed., Journal of Medorem Crawford (Eugene, 1897), 
p. 16; see also Elijah White, Ten Years in Oregon: Travels and Adventures 
of Doctor E. White and Lady West of the Rocky Mountains (Ithaca, N, Y., 
1848), pp. 145-68, parti~ularly, pp. 162-4 . 
. 
74Genealogical Material, vol. II, p. 73; Owens-Adair, p. 234; Landis 
MS. Reportedly the two families built the first frame house in the town, 
using Perry's millwright skills. 
7511Solomon H. Smith," Transactions of the 15th Annual Reunion of the 
Oregon Pioneer Association for 1887 (Portland, 1887), pp. 88-9; Jo Tuthill, 
"Elbridge Trask," The Mountain Man and the Fur Trade of the Far West, ed. · 
Leroy Ha£en (Glendale, 1972), p. 377; Owens-Adair, p. 234. 
76Phillip H. Overmeyer, "Members of the First Wyeth Expedition," 
Oregon Historical Quarterly, XXXVI (1935), p. 101; Ennna Gene Miller, Clat-
sop County, Oregon: A History, (Portland, 1958), p. 142. 
77 E. Ruth Rockwood, ed., "Letters of Charles Stevens (1854)," Oregon 
Historical Quarterly, XXXVIII (1937), p. 81; Leslie M. Scott, "First Tax-
payers ih Oregon, 1844," Oregon Historical Quarterly, XXXI (1930), p. 24. 

40 
he met with considerable difficulty. On March 19th Lattie wrote that 
Trask "unluckily broke his Plow which was by the by rather a weak one 
being country made." Two weeks later Trask was still at it, but Lattie 
noted he was "unable Lto succeeg/ from the ground being so foul and Plow 
being so weak and bad." To add to his troubles, in the interim his ox 
developed a deep sore above one hoof which hampered its effectiveness, 78 
By 1848 Trask joined forces with Perry, Tibbetts, and Owens again, 
but this time the men built a schooner rather than a mill. With Robert 
McEwan as part owner and captain, the men loaded the ship with produce 
from Clatsop Plains, butter, bacon, eggs, and potatoes, mostly potatoes. 
They sold both cargo and schooner in Sacramento in July 1849 and returned 
to the Plains aboard the Forrest. Tibbetts died of cholera on the return 
t . 79 rip. 
Trask accompanied Nathan Dougherty and family to Tillamook Bay in 
the spring of 1852 on Captain Menes' brig Quadratus, one year after the 
78Thomas Vaughn, ed., "Alexander Lattie's Fort George Journal, 1846," 
Oregon Historical Quarterly, LXIV (1963), pp. 214, 218, 219. 
79Lewis and Dryden's Maxine History of the Pacific Northwest ed. E. 
W. Wright (Portland, 1895), p. 24; letter of Courtney Walker, 26 August 
1849 cited in Caroline C. Dobbs, Men of Charnpoeg (Portland, 1932), p. 40. 
The data concerning the ship-building of Elbridge· Trask et. al. on Clatsop 
Plains is conflicting. Owens-Adair claims that the men built the schooner 
Pioneer in the Spring of 1848, then sailed it with Captain McEwan to San 
Francisco, with Tibbetts dying on the return (no date). Lewis and Dryden 
list no such vessel, but do mention the construction of the Skipanon by 
the men. According to port records, the Skipanon arrived in Sacramento in 
July, 1849, and Lewis and Dryden notes that the group returned aboard the 
Ocean Bird in August. The Walker letter states that Tibbetts died aboard 
the Forrest on August 11, 1849. Tuthill claims that the men returned on 
the Priest but she has obviously confused the ship's name with the owners, 
Bobb, Lee, and Priest. Lewis and Dryden lists no record of a Priest at all. 
All the sources state that Tibbetts was returning from the gold fields, 
implying that he had been there longer than the July-August span in 1849. 
Tuthill interprets this to mean the men all went down in 1848 and returned 

41 
first settler, Joe Champion, had arrived. Trask then returned to Clatsop 
Plains, settled his accounts, and gathered up his family, which by now 
included Hannah and her daughter Rosaltha, plus twin girls, two more 
daughters, and a son. The whole group arrived in Tillamook Bay on Aug-
80 
ust 1, 1852, aboard a sloop owned by Menes. Trask filed a donation 
land claim of 640 acres on what is now the Trask River. 81 
Trask worked on his farm for the next eleven years until his death 
in 1863. As one of the early settlers of the area, he was involved in 
the beginnings of government for Tillamook. Following the organization 
of the region as a .county in December 1853, Trask was elected Justice of 
the Peace, and he served a short period as County Cormnissioner. 82 But 
Trask was not lllllch of a political soul: he had passed up the opportunity 
to participate in the fateful meeting at Champoeg in May, 1843, although 
his friends Tibbetts and Russell both attended; he avoided politics 
in 1849, but since Hannah Trask gave birth to George on June 12, 1849, 
Elbridge had to have been on the Plains in September, 1848. Thus either 
two schooners were built or Tibbetts quit the project at the news of gold, 
· or both. Whatever, Trask was busy from Spring of 1848 onward. See Owens-
Adair, p. 159; Tuthill, p. 378; Overmeyer, p. 101; "News and Con:n:nent," . 
Oregon Historical Quarterly, XXXII (1931), p. 87. 
80Joe C. Champion, "A Brief Account of the Settlement of Tillamook 
by the First Settler," MS in Book A, Vol. I, County Court Journal (1860), 
Tillamook County Courthouse; Warren H. Vaughn, "Early Settlement of 
Tillamook County, 1851-1858," MS in University of Oregon Library, p. 14; 
Landis MS. Four more children were added to the Trask family, once settled 
in Tillamook Bay: Harriet and Martha (b. Dec. 21, 1843), Bertha (b. Sept. 
23, 1845), Nancy Jane (b. July 5, 1847), George (b. June 12, 1849), Endora 
(b. July 24, 1853), William (b. Feb. 14, 1855), Charles (b. Jan. 28, 1857), 
Arvilla (b. Nov. 27, 1858). 
81 . Genealogical Material, p. 73, claim 1fo3926, August 16, 1852. 
82_ . · 
-Vaughn "Settlement," pp. 43-5; Landis MS. 

42 
completely on Clatsop Plains, preferring easy-going social relationships 
instead; and he very quickly withdrew from Tillamook politics, into which 
he had evidently been drawn by his chronological status and the scarcity 
of bodies. 
Trask exhibited a curiosity about nature, but he could hardly have 
. been called a philosopher or intellectual. When Osborne Russell experi-
enced his religious enlightenment in the mountains in 1841, Trask was 
indifferent to his attempts at discussion of Christian principles and 
would not listen to the subject. 83 On the other hand, however, Trask 
spent an entire day and part of a night watching a geyser in the Yellow-
stone River region, timing the eruptions. He was fascinated by the 
regularity of the spring's movements. 84 
The Clatsop Plains in 1848 was a small but expanding outgrowth away 
from the main body of white settlement in the Willamette Valley. The 
Methodists had established a mission on the Plains in 1840 under the 
supervision of Reverend John H. Frost. Accompanying Frost to the area 
85 
were Solomon H. Smith and Calvin Tibbetts, both former Wyeth men. Set-
tlers trickled onto the Plains following Smith and Tibbetts, and by 1848 
there were between forty and fifty families settled into farming behind 
the rolling dunes. 86 Yet the limits of Clatsop Plains farming were 
83 Rockwood, "Atkinson, 11 pp . 350-1. 
84 Russell, p. 98. 
85Nellie Pipes, ed., "The Journal of John H. Frost, 1840-43," Ore-
gon Historical Quarterly, XXXV (1934), pp. 53, 58; "Solomon H. Smith, 11 
p. 86. Frost abandoned the calling in August, 1843, and was replaced 
with Josiah L. Parrish until the mission was closed in 1844. 
86 Rockwood, "Atkinson, 11 pp . 17 2 , 17 4; Rockwood, "Stevens , " p . 81. 

43 
becoming recognized, for although corn grew moderately well, and potatoes 
grew extremely well, the all-important crop of wheat did not flourish in 
the sandy soil. Since wheat, at a dollar a bushel, was the monetary stan-
dard of trade among the settlers in the Oregon . country at the time, its 
importance to the farmers should not be underestimated. 87 Agriculture 
on Clatsop Plains did not wither completely, however, for California mar-
kets for potatoes were becoming more plentiful--and would expand greatly 
after word of gold reached Oregon in August of 1848. 88 
In addition to markets for staples, California provided a . growing 
demand for lumber. Early in 1845, Hunt's mill sent 50,000 feet of timber 
to California aboard the Chenanru.s. A second mill was built at the south 
end of the Plains, and. by 1848 large quantities of lumber were departing 
f A . 89 rom storia. The California gold rush accelerated this demand. 
By the late 1840's, however, as the white settlement was expanding, 
the Clatsop Indian tribe was failing rapidly, its culture and heritage 
supplanted by white civilization. Part of a larger group of Indians 
called Chinook, the Clatsops had occupied lands on the south bank of the 
Columbia River at its mouth, extending east to Tongue Point and south 
along the Pacific Ocean to Tillamook Head. Part of the greater Northwest 
Indian culture, the Clatsops shared many of the characteristics of the 
natives all along the Northwest Coast, from the Salish farther south to 
the Tlingit in the far north. 
87For good illustrations of the use of wheat as a roonetary exchange, 
see Neall, pp. 50, 60, 63. 
88Ibid., p. 108. 
89Ruby and Brown, p. 211. 

The Clatsops relied heavily on salmon and other marine life as a 
food source, supplementing their diet with roots and berries in season 
44 
and occasionally an elk or other animal. They lived in plank lodges, 
usually with several families in each. The material culture of the Clat-
sops reflected the abundance of timber in the area, and the cedar tree 
was used as variously and ingeniously by them as the buffalo on the open 
plains. Much of their travel was by canoe on the rivers and sea, although 
they did not customarily build the very large canoes that were more connnon 
90 to the north. 
The population of the Clatsops prior to the arrival of the white 
man is open to speculation. Estimates of between 200 and 300 Clatsops in 
91 1780 are generally accepted. A severe epidemic of smallpox swept the 
coast in the 1780's, but the population was evidently back to normal 
strength by the time Lewis and Clark estimated the Clatsops to number 
200. 92 In 1825 an official of the Hudson's Bay Company reported a Clat-
sop population of 190, including free and slave. 93 
By the late 1840's, significant changes had taken place among the 
Clatsops. In 1851 Robert Shortess reported to Indian Agent Anson Dart 
9
°For a full discussion of the Pacific Northwest Indian culture, see 
Philip Drucker, Indians of the Northwest Coast (Garden City, 1963). 
91James Mooney, The Aboriginal Population of .America North of Mexico 
(Washington, 1928), pp. 13-17; Herbert C. Taylor, Jr., "Aboriginal Popula-
tions of the ·Lower Northwest Coast," Washington Historical Quarterly, LIV 
(1963), p. 163. 
92Reuben Gold Thwaites, ed., Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark 
Expedition, 1804-1806 (New York, 1904), vol. VI, p. ll7n. 
93Alexander Kennedy, "Report of Chief Factor Alexander Kennedy, 1824-
25," cited in Robert H. Ruby and John A. Brown, The Chinook Indians (Nor-
man, 1976), p. 178. 

45 
that there were only 80 Clatsops, virtually all of whom were crowded into 
a single village on Point Adams, while previously they had occupied six 
widespread villages. 94 Of the 80, only 54 were full blooded Clatsop. The 
causes for the loss of population are both obvious and subtle. A serious 
epidemic, called the 'cold sick' by the natives, swept through the region ' 
in the early 1830's. Dr. John McLoughlin of the Hudson's Bay Company 
estimated that three fourths of the Indians around Ft. Vancouver died at 
h t . 95 t e 1.me. So devastating was the disease that Hall J. Kelley claimed 
that at the mouth of the Columbia in 1834 one "heard little more than the 
sight .and cries of the misery in the perishing remnants of the Clotsop (sic) 
· 96 
and Chenook tribes." Adding to the problem, smallpox returned in 1836, 
and the natives continued to treat the various fevers with a form of 
hydrotherapy, consisting of time in a sweat lodge followed by a rush into 
the icy waters, a practice which only proved to aggravate the illness. 97 
Herbert C. Taylor, Jr., estimated that between 1790 and 1832, 7/8 to 19/20 
94Robert Shortess to Anson Dart, Feb. 5, 1851, cited in Ruby and 
Brown, p. 222; Daniel Lee and John H. Frost, Ten Years in Oregon (New York, 
1844), p. 236. 
95E. E. Rich, ed., McLaughlin's Fort Vancouver Letters, First Series, 
1825-38 (Toronto, 1941), pp. 88, 115, 232-3; Sanru.el Parker, Journal of an 
Exploring Tour (Ithaca, 1838), p. 178. Parker estimated deaths at 7/8 to 
9/10 of the native population. 
96Hall J. Kelley, "A History of the Settlement of Oregon and the 
Interior of Upper California," cited in Ruby and Brown, p. 189. In Traits 
of American Indian Life and Character by a Fur Trader (San Francisco, 1933), 
Peter Skene Ogden noted that the corpses piled up because there were too 
many dead for the living to care for properly (pp. 67-71). 
97 Parker, p. 178; see also Herbert C. Taylor, Jr., and Lester L. 
Hoagland, Jr., "The 'Intermittent Fever' Epidemic of the 1830s on the Lower 
Columbia River," Ethnohistory, IX, 2(Spring 1962). 
' 
' 
" 
·: 
' :~ 
"' 
,II 

of all Chinooks (including Clatsops) "died of smallpox, ague, syphillis 
and other of civilization's many blessings. 1198 
46 
The Northwest Indians were constantly warring among themselves, 
even well before the advent of the whites; but wars were often settled 
in pre-battle negotiation sessions, or at least after the fall of a min-
imal number of men. 99 After trade opened with whites, however, the num-
bers lost in battle increased greatly due to the availability of more 
effective weapons to replace spears _and bows. Rev. Frost reported that 
on several occasions he could hear the peppering of gunfire all day 
100 long. 
More subtle forces helped to precipitate the drastic decline in the 
Clatsop population, however, forces which eroded the Indians social and 
cultural structures. The twenty years of sea trade up until 1810 began 
modifying the social structure of the coastal Indians as wealth among 
them increased. Those who adapted most quickly to the new trade arrange-
ments gained in relation to the others in the society, thus altering the 
traditional social patterns. 101 · As bands of Indians jostled for position 
vis-~-vis the white traders, war activity increased somewhat for the 
higher stakes. Contact with sailors prompted an increase in marital 
98 · Herbert C. Taylor, Jr., "Anthropological Investigation of the 
Tillamook Indians Relative to Tribal Identity and Aboriginal Land Claims," 
in American Indian Ethnohistory: Indians of the Northwest, ed. David A. 
Horr (New York, 1974), p. 37. 
99 Ross Cox, Adventures on the Columbia River (New York, 1832), 
vol. I , p . 154. 
100 · Lee and Frost, p. 97. 
101 Drucker, pp. 129~30. 
:11 
•/II 
Ill 
"' 111111 (: 
II', 
ii, 
47 
infidelity (although to a certain degree it had long been an accepted 
social behavior), but more important the contact spread venereal disease 
among the natives, the- repercussions of which really only appeared later 
in the 1840's and 1850's. 102 In addi~ion, the diseases mentioned before 
disrupted inheritance lines of the Clatsops, which in turn hampered the 
conmrunication of the cultural heritage from one generation to another. 103 
Relying on informa.tion from James Birnie, Richard Brinsley Hinds 
rioted in his journal that the "prosperity of Europeans had struck deeply 
at the root of the customs" of the coastal Indians. 104 The Indians turned 
away from their traditional products of the land and utilized trade goods 
instead: blankets replaced skins and cedar bark mats; iron tools replaced 
stone and wooden implements; traditional clothing gave way to the pants 
and shirts of the white man; the skills of basketry fell into disuse. 
Birnie noticed that the custom of carving images of men and animals 
. 105 declined. Even in such a simple matter as canoe design, the old prac-
tices were modified by the use of sails. 106 
Furthermore, when the Hudson's Bay Company, and later other traders, 
moved the base of trade operations inland to Ft. Vancouver, the Chinooks 
io;.atives in Alaska often called venereal disease "Chinook. ,t Ruby 
and Brown, p. 156. 
103Ruby and Brown, p. 127; Joyce A. Wike, "The Effect of the Mari-
time Fur Trade on Northwest Coast Indian Society," Diss. Columbia Univer-
sity (1952), pp. 97-98. 
104Richard Brinsley Hinds, "Journal," MS, File XIII, Kenneth L. 
Holmes Collection, Oregon Historical Society (n.d., n.p.). 
l05Ibid. 
106Fredric W. Howay, "A Yankee Trader on the Northwest Coast, 1791-
1795," Washington Historical Quarterly, XXI (1930), pp. 90-1. 

and Clatsops lost their position as middlemen between the whites and the 
interior bands of Indians, a position they had maintained since long 
before the arrival of whites. The loss further impoverished the Lower 
Columbia Indians and increased their dependence on the trade goods of 
the whites. 
Certainly, over the span of the half century following the entry 
of Captain Robert Gray into the Columbia River, the local Indians fell 
more and more under the power and authority of the whites. Duncan 
McDougall achieved great control by frightening the natives in 1812 with 
the claim that he .held the smallpox disease contained in a small vial, 
h t · 1 · t 1.· f d 107 Man f h 1 ad t rea en1.ng to re ease 1. aggravate. yo t e ear y tr ers 
took native wives, mostly from the native aristocracy, which often gen-
erated influence for the whites within the bands beyond the normal trad-
. 1 t' ·h. 108 1.ng re a 1.ons 1.ps. By 1851, 18 of the 80 remaining Clatsops were half-
bloods, almost 25%. One complication arising out of the mixed marriages 
was the insistence by the whites that the heads of the offspring not be 
flattened, as was the custom among the free-born natives. Such a demand 
went directly counter to the native cultural mores, and it inevitably led 
to cultural and psychological confusion among the natives. 
Perhaps the most devastating influence of white civilization on the 
native society arrived in the form of liquor. Although ~ailors had given 
natives access to alcohol occasionally, the real introduction of liquor 
107 · Cox, vol. I, pp. 314-5. 
108Ruby and Brown, pp. 145-6, 222. 
' " ,1! 
41 ~I I 
111:: 
Ii,: 
1t' 
11, 
II, 
,[' 
·1 
49 
in any quantity was at the hands of the Northwest Fur Company about 1813. 109 
Thereafter, rum and whiskey were staples of the trade. For the next forty 
years the Americans would blame the British for corrupting the natives 
with alcohol while they themselves dispensed it freely, and the British 
would do the same. It should be noted that traders under the authority 
of Dr. John McLaughlin were under strict orders not to give liquor to 
Indians, but at the mouth of the Columbia River, McLaughlin's authority 
was not always respected or deferred to. The effect of liquor on Indian 
culture was devastating: indolence became commonplace among the formerly 
industrious natives, partly as a result of a growing dependence on trade 
goods but generally a consequence of the debilitating effects of the 
liquor; intertribal violence became more widespread as intoxicated natives, 
released from traditional cultural controls, quarreled among themselves 
h · 1 f ad d ambl. llO overt e spo1 so tr e an g 1ng. 
Many persons, both native and irrnnigrant, sought to limit the dis-
tribution of liquor. Rev. Frost attempted unsuccessfully to prevent the 
sale of alcohol from a ship in 1842, blaming the ship's trade for the 
death of at least one native. The incident prompted a Clatsop to advise 
Frost, "Your people are very bad, friend. 11111 Later in 1847, a major 
furor arose over the possession and sale of liquor by a certain George T. 
Geer. The settlers were upset with Geer because he sold alcohol to the 
natives, and they narrowly averted an outbreak of violence in their 
l09Ibid., p. 152. 
110 Parker, p. 243. 
lllp · 367 8 L and F t 316 7 1pes, pp. - ; ee ros , pp. - . 
1 i 

50 
1. d h" . 112 Wh A D . d eagerness to c ose own is operation. en nson art negotiate 
.several Indian treaties at Tansey Point in 1851, the natives demanded as 
one condition of the treaties that a certain unscrupulous liquor trader, 
Washington Hall, be removed from among them, demonstrating a belated 
113 
awareness of the devastation caused by the alcohol trade. . 
Nearly every observer of the scene on Clatsop Plains in the late 
1840's noticed the poor coridition of the natives and almost unanimously 
blamed the corrupting influence of white civilization for that condition. 
Overton Johnson wrote that the mingling of white men with the Indians 
tended "to degrade, sink, and destroy" the latter. Wyndham Robertson, 
Jr., wrote of the Ciatsops that "their inexhaustible resources have been 
taken from them, their bows unstrung, arid from 'lords of the soil,' they 
have sunk to the degradation of slaves." Rev. John Frost lamented in 
1843 that none might live "to tell the sad tale of their decline. 11114 
Evidence that the natives had all but given up on their cultural 
survival can be fourid in the brief notations in Richard Brinsley Hinds' 
journal concerning the large numbers of abortions and infanticides among 
th . 115 e natives. Between November, 1841, and February, 1842, Rev. Frost 
112 Oregon Spectator, July 22, 1847 and August 5, 1847. At the trial 
Solomon Smith admitted that he partook of intoxicating beverages, arid Joe 
Champion said he bought it to entertain ''lady friends." 
113 
"Report of Superintendent Dart to the Commissioner of Indian 
Affairs," September 23, 1852. Senate Executive Document ffol, 32nd Congress, 
2nd Session. 
1140verton Johnson and William H. Winter, Route Across the Rocky 
Mountains, ed. Carl L. Cannon (Princeton, 1932), p. 55; Wyndom Robertson, 
Jr., Oregon, Our Right and Title: Containing an Account of the Condition 
of the Oregon Territory, (1846), cited in Ruby and Brown, p. 143, Pipes, p. 370. 
115Hinds, "Journal" . 
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51 
enumerated only two babies survived out of ten births, and he noted 
h f h h . h al. . t 116 infanticide waste primary reason or t e ig mort ity ra e. It 
is probable that the infanticides resulted from syphilitic defects, the 
harvest of seeds sown earlier. Yet the aura of hopelessness and despair 
pervaded Clatsop society in the 1840's as it faced cultural, social, and 
physical destruction. 
In 1848, Solomon H. Smith stood squarely between the clashing cul-
tures of the whites and the natives. A member of Wyeth's first expedition 
to the Northwest, Smith had remained at Ft. Vancouver, where he was 
engaged to teach school for two years. While at Ft. Vancouver he had met 
· 117 
and married Celiast, daughter of the Clatsop chief Coboway. He then 
moved onto French Prairie where he pursued a variety of occupations, and 
in 1840 he accompanied Rev. John Frost to Clatsop Plains and settled on 
Neahcoxie Creek at the south end of the Plains. The Smiths later moved 
to a claim near Skipanon Creek, where they raised six children of their 
own, as well as a Tibbetts boy and a Hawaiian slave girl named Jessie Bill, 
whom Celiast purchased from a sailor. Rev. Frost noted in his journal 
that the Smiths "enjoy religion," and indeed they had been married by Jason 
Lee. Some chroniclers have claimed that the Smiths moved to Clatsop Plains 
because of a missionary zeal on the part of Celiast, while others state 
116 Lee and Frost, p. 314. 
11711
solomon H. Smith," pp. 81-4. Celiast, or Ellen as the mission-
aries called her, had been married previously to a French-Canadian and 
how she and Smith resolved the marital entanglements is subject to some 
controversy. See Alfred Powers, History of Oregon Literature (Portland, 
1935), p. 132; Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of Oregon (San Francisco, 
1886), vol. I, p. 182; Charles H. Carey, History of Oregon (Chicago, 1922), 
vol. I, p. 340. 
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they merely wished to be near her people. Perhaps both reasons were 
. 118 
operative. Because of his ties both to the white society where he was 
respected and accepted and to the Clatsop society where his wife enjoyed 
an honored position, Solomon Smith served as a go-between for the two 
cultures. He acted as an informal Indian agent until the appointment of ' 
Josiah L. Parrish in 1849, and even after that he was regarded as a 
buffer when troubles arose. Frost appealed to Celiast to try to preclude 
some customs he considered barbarous, such as the burial alive of a dying 
119 person to avert the interruption of a salmon run. During the contro-
versy concerning liquor dealer George T. Geer in 1847, the settlers 
appealed to Smith to intercede with the Indians in an attempt to halt 
120 their purchase of alcohol. James Harrell, a partner with Smith in a 
mill venture on the Lewis and Clark River, referred to him as "Clatsop 
Smith. 11121 Certainly Solomon Smith sympathized with the plight of the 
Clatsops more than many of the settlers, and he did not necessarily equate 
their different customs with evil. He worked well with the natives, 
unlike Rev. Frost. It was Smith who persuaded the Indians to assist in 
building a house for Frost and his wife in September, 1840. 
Rev. John Frost, on the other hand, shared a decidedly uncomplimen-
tary view of the Indians with many of his fellow men of the cloth. 
118Pipes, p. 58; Dobbs, p. 33; Powers, p . 132; "Solomon H. Smith," p. 84. 
119p · 71 3 1pes, pp. - . 
120 Oregon Spectator, July 22, 1847. 
121Fred Lockley, "Reminiscences of James E. R. · Harrell," Oregon Histor-
ical Quarterly, XXIV (1923), p. 189. See also Vaughn, "Settlement,1t p. 5; 
Vaughn was to deliver Indian Jim to "Salmon" Smith. 
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Throughout his journal, Frost draws a dismal picture of the Clatsops as 
•tstupid,1t •tsuperstitious," and, worst of all, ignorant of God. Frost held 
no respect for the native religious beliefs and practices, and he heaped 
scorn on the Clatsops for having "no idea of a future state." He even 
complained that their language was t:oo defective to express divine con-
cepts at all. 122 He ignored or dismissed the large body of folk tales 
which explained the ideas of an all powerful god, a devil, the land of 
. the dead, as well as events in nature. The mind of a nineteenth century 
missionary seldom reserved a place within for understanding of another 
f l 'f 123 way o 1 e. Yet while Frost rejected Clatsop beliefs, especially in 
the field of medicine, as ignorant superstition, he was able to comment 
in all seriousness on the prominence of the Indians' "bump of avaricious-
ness" due to the custom of head-flattening. 124 
Don Berry mined the historical Clatsop Plains of 1848 for the basic 
elements of Trask. The background from which Elbridge Trask, along with 
Charlie Kehwa and Wakila, emerges in the novel is painstakingly drawn from 
the historical records of the time and place, yet Berry manages to set all 
the facts down in an informal and relaxed manner. As one reviewer wrote, 
Berry presents "history glancingly told" in his novels. 125 The Indian 
122 . Pipes, pp. 56, 60, 236, 359-60. 
123For example, see Paul C. Phillips, ed., "The Oregon Mission as 
Shown in the Walker Letters, 1839-1851," Frontier Omnibus, ed. John W. 
Hackola (Missoula, 1962); or later examples from China missionaries, Henry 
Olin Cady, Emily Hatfield Hobart, and Charles F. Johnson in Special Collec-
tions, University of Oregon Library. 
124Pipes, pp. 56, 239. 
125Hal Borland, "Mountain Man down from the Hills," New York Times 
Book Review, Sept. 9, 1962, p. 41. 
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characters appear as human beings unencumbered by the stilting stereotypes 
so often strangling the roles of Indians in other fiction. Charley Kehwa 
is a shrewd and intelligent man who understands both the native culture 
of his own heritage and that of the 'Boston men' as well. He represents 
the spiritual power of the native culture while being fully aware of the 
physical power of the white society. It is of little rna.tter ultimately 
that he embodies the integrity of the Indians, however, for he is trapped, 
as were all natives, by the circumstances of his times. He could not 
escape the fact that he was a Clatsop and doomed, even though he could 
understand the situation. On the other hand, Wakila is caught in the 
decline of his culture without any understanding of the events which doom 
him. He believes that he can recover his strength, and the strength of 
the Clatsop band, through physical exertion and ~raditional direction. 
By chopping wood for Trask, he hopes to work off the hangover caused by 
the white man's liquor, unaware that he is too late to save himself. He 
is the product of the clash of cultures and the disintegrating Clatsop 
environment. "He has a choice ... and no choice at all. Two worlds, and 
he can't have either of them. He knows too Imlch of us to find pride in 
his own people anymore, and not enough to become a white man" (p. 62). 
Disease, death., and disrespect were all visited upon the Indians by white 
civilization and what remained of their culture was .insufficient to sus-
tain their life, whether, like Charley Kehwa, they realized it, or, like 
Wakila, did not. The two are historically plausible if not specifically 
historical. 
One of the most intriguing and important aspects of Charley Kehwa 
is the sympathy and understanding with which Berry draws the character 

55 
of the tamanawis man. The mystical union of man and his envirorunent was 
a basic tenet of spiritual belief among the Northwest Indians, and as 
such it is an important heritage of the Northwest. Yet for those descend-
ants of the European culture, the spiritual vision is a difficult, if not 
impossible, concept to grasp. Berry claims that one IIIllst usually go 
beyond the limits of one's own culture and language in order to express 
the spiritual experience. Because European culture does not for the most 
part allow for the visionary experience--except in religious ecstasy--
Berry says the symbology for dealing with the experience is not present 
. E lt 126 in uropean cu ure. The role of Charley Kehwa becomes more important, 
because it is the vehicle through which Berry and the reader rrust come to 
grips with and accept the mystical union of man and surroundings so essen-
tial to the Indian culture. 
The tamanawis man or shaman of the Northwest Indians was a person 
charged with remarkable responsibilities. With him rested the proper per-
formance of the various rituals, especially those pertaining to the return 
of the salmon, upon which the natives depended so heavily. The shaman 
also performed as a medicine man, caring for the ill in body or soul. 
Additionally, he (in some rare cases: she) was looked to for guidance 
as a fortune teller of sorts. He was thought to have the ability to com-
rrunicate with the spirits, either through dreams or .meditations. 
The tamanawis man receives his powers through a vision on the Search-
ing, although, like other youths prior to initiation into manhood, he 
usually learns rruch about the profession before embarking on the Searching. 
1261ove, "Interview." 
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Most tamanawis men were following in the footsteps of a father or close 
relative. 127 The powers of the shaman were considerable, for he was 
believed to be able to sunnnon a variety of spirits or spirit helpers, 
either to harm or to heal. Disease was often considered to be the result 
of a lost s9ul, whether stolen by a spirit or just gone astray, The 
shaman would sunnnon his spirit helpers through songs, chants, and dances, 
and in some cases the shaman would himself travel to the land of the 
spirits to seek the lost soul. To do so the shaman would lie next to the 
ill--or sometimes dead--Indian and search by meditation and trance, dram-
t . . th . f . . t 128 a 1z1ng e Journey o a sp1r1 canoe. 
The equipment of the shaman consisted of a variety of herbal med-
icines, rattles, masks, and carved boards or sticks representing their 
· . 129 
spirit helpers. The belief in the powers of the shaman was absolute. 
Rev. John Frost ridiculed the natives' beliefs in the curative ability of 
the medicine men on Clatsop Plains, as they presented bits of hair and 
h 11 th f ·11 130 s e s as e causes o 1 .nesses. Yet there was no doubt on the part 
of the natives. One historian has claimed that a shaman could become so 
powerful that he could make a person fall dead by grabbing that person's 
127Franz Boas, "Traditions of the Tillamook Indians," Journal of 
American Folklore, XI (1898), pp. 23-38; Hubert Howe Bancroft, Native 
Races of the Pacific States (New York, 1874), vol. 1, p. 246; Drucker, 
pp. 158-61. 
128 Drucker, p. 160; Cox, vol. I, pp. 158-9. 
129Thomas W. Newman, "Tillamook Prehistory and its Relation to the 
Northwest Coast Culture Area," Unpublished dissertation, University of 
Oregon (1959), p. 86; Drucker, plates# 29, 30, 31. 
130P. 56 1pes, p. • 
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57 
soul from the air around his body. Hubert Howe Bancroft is a bit more 
conservative, stating only that "Some observors believe that mesmeric 
influences are exerted. 11131 Yet psychic powers are not really understood 
today, and the effects of placebos in modern medical and psychological 
research certainly indicate that the possibilities of the powers of sug-
gestion and psychic medicine are not entirely without foundation. This 
power is established for Charley with the incident in the Nehalem village, 
when Charley changes the hostility of his hosts into fear merely by pro-
ducing his tamanawis wand and threatening the men (pp. 175-179). Belief 
in the powers of that symbol created an unwillingness to test those 
powers. 
In the character of Charley Kehwa, Don Berry has gathered the wis-
dom and the vitality of the Northwest coastal spiritual experience, the 
experience he hoped to transfer to European cultural terms in Trask. As 
Wakila described him, "Charley Kehwa could become any of the things in 
the world, so said the people, This was Charley's greatness, that he 
understood and was one with all the powers: the wind and the . seas and 
mountains and spirits and the minds of men"(p. 63). Earlier in the novel, 
Berry, through Solomon Smith, likens the power of the tamanawis to what he 
would call a 'hunch'; but later, Charley says that it is an understanding 
of how the world operates, of how the pieces fit together, of what man's 
role is in the whole world view (pp. 67, 98). In simple, yet somehow pro-
found, terms Berry has distilled the essence of the Northwest coastal 
Indians' spiritual experience, and it is not so very alien to western 
131Bancroft, Native Races, vol. I, p. 246; Samuel A. Clarke, Pioneer 
Days of Oregon History (Portland, 1905), vol. I, pp. 111-2. 

58 
culture after all. It is certainly a part of the literary tradition, in 
fact all artistic tradition, of western civilization. More important, it 
is a key to the Western experience, the experience of man alone in nature, 
seeking and exploring. 
As Trask moves down the coast from Clatsop Plains toward the land 
on the Killamooks, guided by Charley and assisted by Wakila, Don Berry 
follows the account of a similar trip in 1841 by Rev. John Frost, accom-
panied by Solomon Smi.th, a Clatsop youth named Wakilkil, and a sailor 
named Lewis Taylor. 132 Frost hoped to find a route into the Willamette 
Valley by which he could bring cattle to Clatsop Plains, the route up the 
Columbia and Willamette Rivers being costly and time consuming. The trip 
down the coast was arduous, as the men had to cut their way through thick 
brush and brambles up to twelve feet high. In addition to the rough con-
ditions, Frost had had difficulty in obtaining a guide, partly because 
few wanted to undertake such a journey, and partly because of enmity 
between the Clatsop chief Kotata and the Killamook tyee Kilchis. Frost 
finally was able to hire a Killamook who happened to be on Clatsop Plains, 
but he deserted them shortly. 
Frost's description of the trip is vivid. The group travelled by 
the old Indian trail, for that was the path Wakilkil remembered from a 
trip he had made as a boy. 
The trail ... lies along the side of the mountain LNeahkahniy 
which rises abruptly out of the ocean, and which is as 
steep as the roof of a house along where the path passes; 
the path was not nruch wider than a mans two hands, the soil 
being composed of gravel like unto broken slate stone, and 
at some places ve·ry stoney. And below the path, the decent, (sic) 
132
see Pipes, pp. 235-62, 348-54. 

in many places, was very nearly perpendicular, and loosing 
itself into the depth of the Ocean below, who.se angry waves 
keep up one continual roar.133 . 
59 
Frost at one point expressed ccncern lest they lose Machera, Solomon 
Smith's packhorse, over the edge "into the foaming billows which rolled 
beneath our feet. 11134 On the return trip, Taylor did slip over a preci-
pice, but not into the ocean, and he had to be rescued. 
At one point the group came to a step up of about four feet where 
they thought the horse would have great difficulty. The horse hesitated 
a bit then reared up on its hind legs, threatening to topple over onto 
Frost and Taylor, then it heaved itself up the step safely, emitting a 
loud snort. Berry reproduced the incident almost verbatim in Trask, so 
taken was he by the horse's effort (p. 124). In fact Berry borrows heav-
ily from Frost's journal for the actual descriptions of the trip, for he 
uses the roof metaphor, a trail width of "two hands," and methods employed 
to clear a trail through the dense brush. 
Once over the difficulty of Neahkahnie, Frost's group experienced 
no further troubles. They were hospitably received by several Indians of 
the Nehalem band of Killamooks, being served fresh venison and steamed 
crabs. Berry borrowed the description of the steaming process almost wor d 
for word (p. 130). 
In December, 1852, and in March, 1853, Warren Vaughn made trips down 
the rugged coast between Clatsop Plains and Tillamook Bay. Although he 
133Pipes, p. 242. William Clark wrote similarly: "If we had unfor-
tunately made one false step we should eneviatably (sic) have fallen into 
the sea and dashed against the rocks in an instant." Thwaites, vol. III, 
p. 324. 
134P. 243 1pes, p. . 
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does not give detailed descriptions ofthe terrain, his accounts are 
impertant in demonstrating some of the hardships suffered on the trip, 
and several of the incidents are adapted by Berry in Trask. On Vaughn's 
first trip, the men were eaten alive by fleas, and only the soaking of 
their blankets in the rain and swollen streams lessened the attacks. 135 
At Hug Point, Vaughn speaks of dashing around the bluff, timing the rush 
136 between the waves. Vaughn wrote of a former trip he had taken trying 
to reach Tillamook Bay from the Willamette Valley over the coast range of 
mountains. On that trip, his companion awoke in the night, sure that a 
wolf was prowling in the campsite. The wolf turned out to be a skunk, and 
Berry included the episode in Trask. 137 Also adapted from Vaughn's remin-
iscences was the sawmill speculator, George Roode, who in reality .made the 
arduous trip down the coast with Vaughn. 138 Berry uses his Roode charac-
ter to make connnents on the political scene in the Oregon country at the 
time, rather than sending him along on the trip. At 225 pounds, the real 
Mr. Roode was too obese to complete the trip envisioned by Berry. 139 Vaughn 
135
vaughn, "Settlement," pp. 9, 10, 11. See also Cox, vol. I, p. 73, 
for another anecdote concerning the necessity of drowning the fleas by 
soaking clothing in the river. 
136 See also Salm.lel Dicken, Pioneer Trails of the Oregon Coast (Port-
land, 1971), p. 19. 
137
vaughn, "Settlement," pp. 2-3. 
138Ibid., pp. 15-6. 
139
one of the few errors of fact in Trask occurs when Roode recites 
what is known of Murderer's Harbor (p. 73). He correctly states Captain 
Gray entered the Bay on August 14, 1788, but he goes . on to say that Gray 
reported the entrance closed by a sandbar on July 5, 1788, Captain John 
Meares so reported, not Gray. See T, C. Elliot, "John Meares Approach to 
Oregon," Oregon Historical Quarterly, XXIX (1928), p. 285. 

61 
also provided Berry with numerous small details such as Hannah Trask's 
cormnents on •tsalmon and potatoes;" the quantity of bread carried for the 
trip, the methods for steaming crabs and fish, the last cabin on Clatsop 
Plains belonging to William Latty, and the presence near Elk Creek of a 
shelter built by . the Killamooks (pp. 3, 7, 16). 140 
The Killamook Indians141 were clustered in several bands along the 
streams emptying into what is now called Tillamook Bay. Prior to 1854 the 
area was variously referred to as Qµicksand Bay, Murderer's Harbor, and 
Killamook Bay. 142 The Killamooks were a branch of the Salish speaking 
Indians of the Northwest, separated from their linguistic brethren by the 
intrusion of the Chinooks down the Columbia River. 143 They shared most 
of their cultural traits with the Chinooks and Clatsops to the north, more 
so than other Salish groups. Certainly part of the reason for this lies 
in the large amount of trading that was carried on between the two groups, 
for most all accounts, from the journals of Lewis and Clark on, mention 
140Lewis and Clark also reported the shelter; see Thwaites, vol. III, 
pp. 323-4. 
141The name 'Killamook' had numerous variations of spelling due to 
the difficulty in transforming the gutteral sounds of the native language 
into written words. The early contacts with the Indians were by people 
untrained in linguistic symbology, and a profusion of spellings resulted. 
Herbert C. Taylor, Jr., lists 52 variations culled from journals in 
"Anthropological Investigation," p. 61; Harvey W. Sco"!,:t, History of the 
Oregon Country (Cambridge, 1924), vol, II, p. 310, lists several Taylor 
missed. 
142Elliott, "Meares," p. 286; T. C. Elliott, "Gray's First Visit to 
Oregon, Haswell's Log of the Sloop Washington," Oregon Historical Quar-
terly, XXIX (1928), p. 177; Pipes, p. 240. 
143 Newman, p. 95; Scott, vol. II, p. 249; Haruo Aoki, "Salishan Indian 
languages," Idaho Yesterdays, 12, l(Spring 1968), p. 9; J. Nielson Barry, 
"The Indians of Oregon: Geographic Distribution of Linguistic Families," 
Oregon Historical Quarterly, XXVIII (1927), pp. 49-61. 
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62 
that the Killamooks were present on Clatsop Plains and even farther up 
the Columbia. 144 As a result of the intercourse with the Indians at the 
Columbia River, as well as contacts. with white coastal traders, the 
Killamooks suffered the same decrease in numbers, although there was no 
liquor in their possession, and, by 1848, very few white men had trav-
elled through their lands. 145 
Many, if not most, of the chroniclers of conditions on the North-
west coast prior to settlement ascribe a certain ferocity to the 
Killamooks, an attitude which plays a major role in the dramatic work-
ings of Trask. The origins of this ferocity in all probability stem from 
the incident in which Lopeus of Captain Robert Gray's crew was killed in 
a scuffle over possession of a sword. Gray named the bay "Murderer's Har-
bor" as a result, and the 'hard reputation' of the Killamooks was born. 146 
Patrick Gass, with the Lewis and Clark expedition, called the Killamooks 
a "ferocious nation," prompted by an alleged attempted nrurder of a white 
concerning a blanket. 147 Yet Clark had a friendly and uneventful visit 
with the Killamooks when he travelled to their bay to purchase whale blub-
ber. He was able to gain enough information from them to map out their 
144Thwai tes, vol. III, pp. 315, 325, 329; Elliot Coues, ed., New 
Light on the Early History of the Greater Northwest: The Manuscripi:Jour-
nals of Alexander Henry and David Thompson (New York, . 1897), vol. II, 
p. 858; Cox, vol. I, p. 302; Pipes, p. 239. 
145 
"Dart Report" (1852). 
146Ell iott, "Gray," p. 177. 
147 James K. Hosmer, ed., Gass's Journal of the Lewis and Clark 
Expedition (Chicago, 1904), p. 192. 
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63 
lands and estimate their numbers. 148 In 1824 David Douglas journeyed 
through their territory sa£ely, and found them quietly digging roots. 149 
One of the survivors of the Jedediah Smith party massacred on the Umpqua 
in July 1828, Arthur Black, was escorted overland by the Killamooks to 
Fort Vancouver without untoward incident. 150 Yet four years later, Dr. 
John McLoughlin sent Michel LaFramboise to the Killamooks with instruc-
151 tions to avenge the nru.rder of two Hudson's Bay trappers. Although Ross 
Cox branded the Killamooks as "the most roguish" of the local Indians, 
both Warren Vaughn and John Frost were treated with considerable hospital-
ity. In fact, Frost noted in his journal that "if they had been disposed 
to be hostile, they had the best opportunity in the world to cut us off. 
But they had no such intention, and probably no such thought. 11152 In addi-
tion Killamook ferocity is implied in the fact that the chiefs of the 
Ki1lamooks and Clatsops were bitter enemies, according to Wakilkil in 
Frost's journal. Yet on their return from the Willamette Valley, Frost 
and Smith met Kotata, the Clatsop tyee who was such an "inveterate" enemy 
of Kilchis, on a trading mission at Barview, in Tillamook Bay. 153 Finally, 
148
Th. ' t 1 III 325 6 iWal. e S, VO • , pp. - . 
149David Douglas, "Sketch of a Journey to the Northwestern Parts of 
the Continent of North America during the Years 1824, -25, -26, -27," 
Oregon Historical Quarterly, V (1904), pp. 94-5 . 
150Maurice S. Sullivan, The Travels of Jedediah Smith (Santa Ana, 
1934), p. 108; Rich, p. 272. 
151 Burt Brown Barker, Letters of Dr. John McLoughlin Written at Ft. 
Vancouver, 1829-1832 (Portland, 1948),pp. 268-9. LaFramboise killed six 
Killamooks and retrieved the horses of the trappers; pp. 271-2. 
152 Cox, vol. I, p. 302; Vaughn, p. 12; Pipes, pp. 247, 255. 
153Pipes, pp. 240, 351. 

Joe Champion, the first white settler in the Tillamook Bay area, noted 
that "the Indians seemed pleased with the prospect of having the whites 
64 
154 to settle among them (Poor Fools)." Thus, the vaunted hostility and 
ferocity of the Killamooks Im.1st be somewhat tempered. Most examples of 
violent behavior seemed to stem from misunderstandings, and such erup-
tions were not unusual among the Clatsops, traditionally considered to 
be a much more peaceful band of natives. Examples of amicable relations 
·with the Killamooks are as prevalent as the more drama.tic ones. Al though · 
playing up the ferocious nature of the Killamooks in such scenes as the 
potlatch at the Nehalem village, the capture of Trask by the Killamooks 
and Illga, the fear of Wakila, the reluctance of most Clatsops to guide 
Trask to Murderer's Harbor, and even the use of the name Murderer's Har-
bor rather than the more common reference of Killamook Bay, Berry does 
point out that the problem between the Clatsops and Killamooks depends 
pretty ruch on the personalities involved (p. 18). Berry's soft dis-
claimer does little to diminish the overall impression of danger as Trask, 
Charley, and Wakila proceed toward the Killamook land, and such a view is 
probably not inconsistent with the way the Clatsops generally viewed the 
Killamook territory, for they seldom went there themselves; concentrating 
instead on the Columbia River trade. George Gibbs noticed that travellers 
in the Northwest were "told by every successive band ~hat just beyond them 
the Indians were very bad; any worse than the last never being reached, 
but, like an ignis fatuus, keeping a little ahead, 11155 
154Champion, "Account," 
155George Gibbs, "Tribes of Western Washington and Northwest Oregon," 
Contributions to North American Ethnology, I (1870), p. 190. 

65 
Like the other Indians in the Northwest, the Killarnook.s did not 
necessarily recognize a single chief, at least not one .who would hold 
sway over all band members in all circumstances. Although farther north, 
groups conceived of chiefs mainly in terms of lineage and to some degree 
in terms of wealth, the social structure became less rigid as one pro-
gresses southward through the linguistic groupings; in Northwestern Cal-
ifornia, the emphasis for selection of chiefs was heavily on individual 
b 'l't 156 a 1 1 y. In addition, the Coast Salish, to which group the Killamooks 
belonged, carried a cultural heritage of a looser social structure than 
the Interior Salish. 157 Generally speaking, then, among the Killamooks, 
and to some extent the Clatsops as well, the chiefs were chosen on the 
basis of ability and usefulness more than heredity. As Sa.nru.el Parker 
noted on his tour of the Oregon country in the 1830s, the chief's "only 
power is influence, and this is in proportion to their wisdom, benevo-
158 lence, and courage." 
Thus, as Charley Kehwa explains to Trask, a tyee does not necessar-
ily speak for all people in the village or band; he gives guidance, but 
his authority is respected only as long as he retains their respect per-
sonally (pp. 220-1). As a result of such a social practice, the rivalry 
between Kilchis and Illga postulated by Berry is theoretically possible, 
but was it indeed a fact? 
Kilchis was a formidable presence among the coastal Indians: a 
156 Drucker, pp. 108-128. 
157 Ibid~ , p. 204. 
158 · Parker, p. 250; see also Bancroft, Native Races, vol. I, p. 240~ 
:1~-1::, 
1:i I 
1: 
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66 
man with a mysterious past and strong leadership abilities, Warren Vaughn 
described Kilchis as •ta large man, with African features, his hair was 
curly, had rather a high forehead, a flat nose, thick lips, and a long 
chin, when sober-minded he had a sort of scowl on his face, but when 
159 pleased his face was smiles all over." At another time Vaughn esti-
mated his weight at two hundred and twenty-five pounds, and concerning 
his character he noted: 
The Indians used to say that in battle he was one of the 
bravest of the brave, owing to .his great strength and agility. 
He was a terror to his enemies, to his friends he was sedate 
and courteous--to his captives and slaves he was humane. As 
a chief, the Indians learned to respect and obey him. He was 
exact in his demands and wanted nothing but justice,160 
Rev, Frost met Kilchis while passing back through the Tillamook Bay 
area on his way to Clatsop Plains with his cattle in 1841. Al though 
Kilchis "had been represented to us as a fierce, warlike chieftain, rt he 
generously assisted them with canoe transportation, after settling a per-
sonal conflict with one of Frost's Clatsop men. Frost added that Kilchis 
"fulfilled his engagement to the letter. 11161 
The origins of Kilchis remain obscure and speculative. He is gen-
erally thought to be the descendant of a shipwreck survivor, whether from 
the famous beeswax ship or a mysterious Neahkahnie treasure ship. One 
early resident of Tillamook Bay claimed that Kilchis was descended from 
Lopeus, of Captain Gray's crew, who had not died in the 1788 attack but 
159
vaughn, "Settlement," p. 15. 
16
°warren H. Vaughn, "Diary," MS in Tillamook County Pioneer Museum 
(n.d., n.p.). This diary is essentially the same as the typed MS "Early 
Settlement of Tillamook County, 1851-1858" in University of Oregon Library, 
but there are several differences in the text, including the above descrip-
tion of Kilchis. 
161p· 349 1pes, p. • 
I ~ 
,,, 
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,. 
, ... 
...... 
(',II' 
:f~ 
... 
t .. 
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, .. 
.. 
had escaped, married, and sired the great black tyee. Ellen Center, 
daughter of Kilchis, maintained that her father had no Negroid blood, 
rather he was a dark-skinned Killamook (of rather large physique, evi-
dently).162 
67 
Don Berry leaves the legends of Kilchis basically intact; to some 
extent he heightens the speculation a bit, however, by tendering the sug-
gestion, through the person of a Nehalem shaman, that perhaps Kilchis is 
a spirit in the form of a man (pp. 21, 189, 241, 275). Berry goes so far 
as to compare Kilchis to the all-powerful spirit Neahkahnie, tying 
together the challenge of the mountain (spirit) and the man, the mystery 
of the mountain and the man, the integrity of the mountain and the man 
(pp. 21, 238). 
Berry assigns great wisdom to the tyee, as well as an understanding 
of the inevitability of the settlement of white men in the Bay. Although 
Joe Champion recorded that the Indians "seemed pleased" to have the whites 
settle among them, two daughters of Illga expressed the situation somewhat 
differently. As they told an interviewer in the 1930s: 
Although Chief Kilchis was always a true friend to the 
white settlers, he told his people at the time of Champion's 
arrival that he did not like to see the white man come to 
Tillamook because wherever he went he took all the land, 
but that there was nothing they could do about it, so it 
was best not to hurt their feelings. 163 
162vaughn, "Settlement" p. 15; Samuel A. Clarke, Pioneer Days of Ore-
gon History (Portland, 1 9 0 5), vol. I, pp. 156-61; Letter of Lucy Doughty 
to Oregonian, June 26, 1930; Letter of Ellen Center to Oregonian, August 5, 
1930. Drucker, p. 26, cites the fact that Clatsops and Killamooks were 
only about 162-165 cm tall. This indicates how large Kilchis was in com-
parison if he were at least six feet tall (182-183 cm). 
163Marguerite Stasek, "Interview with Jane and Emma Adams," MS in 
Tillamook County Pioneer Museum, (n.d., n.p.). 

68 
Warren Vaughn wrote that a stern Kilchis seemed pleased that he had come 
to Tillamook to settle the land, but such a reaction was not inconsistent 
164 
with the attitude of Illga's daughters. Don Berry chose to believe 
the Indian point of view rather than that of Vaughn or Champion (pp.267, 
283). 
Illga was a leader in Killamook society, but he did not exert nearly 
the influence of Kilchis. Illga's position seems to have been one associ-
ated with hereditary claims to leadership with his band of Killamooks, 
although such claims were weak among the Coast Salish, as pointed out 
before. He had far more contact with white society than did Kilchis, and 
he had been to Astoria on trading missions on occasion. He had married a 
Clatsop woman by the 1840s, and he later became a baptized Christian, tak-
ing on the name Adani and giving 'christian' names to his daughters and 
wife. Yet Illga definitely played a role subordinate to Kil chis in the 
affairs of the Killamooks. When Warren Vaughn needed a guide and canoeist 
to take him upriver from the Bay, Kilchis arranged for Illga, a skilled 
165 
canim man, to perform the task. Illga, or Tes~tes-no as he was also 
called, 166 later became the nominal chief after the death of Kilchis in 
1870, but his authority was limited to matters which concerned Killamook 
164
vaughn, "Se~tlement," p. 15. 
165
vaughn, "Settlement," p. 15; Stasek, "Interview." 
166Don Berry uses the alternate spelling of Yes-yes-no, saying it 
shows an ambivalence of whites towards Illga. He undoubtedly bases this 
spelling on Vaughn, "Settlement," p. 36, but that clearly is a mistake 
in transcription. Vaughn uses the "T" variation on p. 15, and that 
spelling appears also in Lucy Doughty, untitled MS, Tillamook County 
Pioneer Museum (1938). Since she had.known Illga, the "T" is probably 
correct. 

69 
relations with the whites. His tenure was short-lived, however, for he 
was soon replaced, at the behest of the Killamooks, by a man who was edu-
cated enough to lmpw how to read and write, 167 There is no record of hos-
tility between Kilchis and Illga, nor, for that matter, between Illga and 
his own successor; the selection of leaders was a process of consent 
rather than intrigue, and all men had the right to speak ori matter~ per-
. . h band ·1 168 ta1n1ng tote at counc1 • 
The land that Trask finds sets his eyes blazing, setting afire his 
determination to settle the Bay area (p. 228). The' land up the rivers 
from the Bay was rich land; buried under a thick covering of ferns 8 to 
10 feet tall was a broad, fertile flood plain. Most early settlers in 
the Willamette Valley avoided areas of fern, believing such surfaces to 
be too boggy for good agriculture. When Rev. Frost wrote later of his 
trip through Tillamook Bay, he claimed to have seen "no land, worth men-
tioning, that was fit for cultivation. 11169 An article in the Oregon Spec-
tator indicated that the best garden in the country was grown in a fern 
t h h d · th t f · f d r1· ch earth·. 170 pa c , owever, an a erns were a sign o eep In early 
sunnner of 1848 George Walling reported that he arid a party of men had dis-
covered fertile prairies in the country around "Kilanruke Bay," while they 
were exploring the coast south from the Columbia River. The men staked 
167 Doughty MS. 
168Gibbs, p. 185. 
169 Lee and Frost, p. 308. 
170 Oregon Spectator, Dec. · 28, 1848. 
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171 
claims but did not stay. 
70 
The land itself is an important element in Berry's writing and in 
the literature of the West in general. Trask's journey is initiated by 
an uneasiness with the land on Clatsop Plains. Unable to articulate the 
cause of his restlessness, Trask can only vaguely speak of the future 
growth of the area. He sees the Plains, and himself, as limited and 
blocked in. Berry conceives of man's grasping for land as an attempt 
at innnortality and permanence. Men "can draw no clear line between them-
selves and the land they walk. They are as much the possessed as the 
possessors" (p. 224). For Berry the land is elemental to human existence. 
Coming to terms with it, as the Indians had, was (and is) a primary theme 
of the West. The only way to do so is "to live in a land, and walk it, 
and plant it, and harvest it and see it in storm and calm until you got 
the rhythm of it in your belly" (p. 4). The ultimate goal for a man is 
to find in the land 
his own image, the solid configuration of himself, worked in 
materials of better staying quality than bone and wood. If 
he listens to the river and hears the coursing of blood through 
his temples; if he looks at a mountain and sees the strength of 
his own arm; if he is lost in the forest as in the darkest wells 
of his own mind--then that land is his, and he has lost the 
faculty of choice concerning it. (p. 226) 
The search for land, the search for that plot of earth that matches 
one's own soul, that is perhaps the strongest theme of western tradition. 
Trask is moved from the Clatsop Plains, not by .any tangible force, but 
171
oregon Spectator, July 13, 1848. Walling's nephew returned and 
married Trask' s daughter, Bertha, in the 1850s. Walling himself became 
a renowned orchardist near Oregon City. This expedition is not mentioned 
elsewhere, and it may or may not have been noticed by Berry in the timing 
of Trask. 
I 1 
,,. ' 
:ri 
.  
.. , 
,II 
Il l 

71 
rather by a vague uneasiness about the land--it does not fit: he cannot 
.feel the rhythm in his belly. Solomon Smith tells Trask that the restless-
ness 'tis in your own belly," thus Trask is not at home, at one, with the 
land (p. 21). George Roode sees in Trask the same restless need to move 
to new land, to move into the wild unopened territory, and he sees that 
need as a very individual matter (pp. 78-9). Each man Im.1st carve his own 
relationship with the land, Im.lch as a Northwest Indian Im.1st carve his 
spirit helper after the Searching. 
While man's spirit is in the land, the land itself and the elements 
have their own spirits. Just as Kilchis assumes an affinity with the god 
Kahnie (pp. 21, 238), the mountain Neahkahnie is somewhat more than the 
place where Kahnie lives in spirit. The mountain takes on the personifi-
cation of the spirit: Charley, Celiast, and even Smith are all reticent 
to relinquish the notion that the mountain may be the body of the god. 
For them it is more than just a mountain (pp. 22-3). As Charley explains 
to Trask, "This is our land, and these are our gods. The gods and the 
land are the same, and the people are part of both"(p. 97). Trask senses 
a personal victory in his battles with the land and the sea on the trip 
down the coast; he observes the struggle between the moon and storm 
clouds, feeling himself to be a part of it; while sitting warm and dry 
in his cabin, during a rain, he has "the notion of a ·minor skirmish won 
with an unnamed enemy" (p. 6). The land and the elements are not to be 
owned or battled as themselves, however, but to be encountered as spirits. 
The spiritual claim on the land bestows on man a claim to irrnnortali ty . . 
The environment as a major actor in the literature of the West, along with 
its personification, its animation, and its spiritual presence, is one of 
,. ' 

72 
the most important cornerstones of western literature. 
The culture of the Killamooks and the Clatsops, both material and 
ritual, were similar to one another, but because of widespread contact 
with the white man before being studied by trained cultural anthropolo-
gists, what is known of the cultures is somewhat limited. Early visitors 
were not necessarily good observers or recorders, but because of the sim-
ilarity of most Northwest groups to one another, tm.1ch can be inferred from 
studies of cultures farther north completed prior to significant white con-
tact. With a few exceptions, Don Berry provides a competent and accurate 
picture of Northwest Indian life. Prior to white settlement, the natives 
generally were naked, although the women did at times wear woven bark 
skirts, while both men and women resorted to woven capes to ward off the 
rain. It was not unusual for them to be mostly naked even in the cold of 
winter. 172 Most all the coast Indians flattened the heads of the free-
born children, while slave-born children were usually not subjected to 
h d . 173 t e process except un er rare circumstances. The term 'flathead' was 
not applied to those Indians of the coast who cradled the heads of their 
infants, however, rather it was applied by the coastal Indians to their 
linguistic relatives inland, whose heads were flat on top rather than 
sloping. On two occasions Berry calls the coastal Indians 'flatheads' 
which is a white, not an Indian, perception (pp. 97, ·169). According 
172Thwaites, vol. IV, pp. 185-6; Hosmer, pp. 176-9; Cox, vol. I, 
p. 169; Parker, pp. 244-5; Marvin C. Ross, €d,, George Catlin: Episodes 
from !'Life Among the Indians" and "Last Rambles" (Norman, 1959), plates 
122, 124. 
173Ross, Catlin, plates 121, 123; see also photographs in American 
Heritage Book of Indians (New York, 1961), p. 292, and The Great North-
west (New York, 1973), p. 171. 
... ;lj" ,., 
;;l t 
1:x ·. 
ll1 
, ... 
•• .1 
to William Clark ' the natives were 
low ig statui:£/e reather diminutive, and illy shapen; 
poss[esi/ing thick broad flat feet, thick ankles, crooked 
legs wide mouths thick lips, nose moderately large, fleshey, 
wide at the extremitx with large nostrils, black eyes and 
black coarse hair.17 
The women usually had thick legs, swollen by poor circulation due to 
73 
tight anklets of beads. The men had Illllscular upper bodies from the exten-
. addl ' 175 s1ve canoe p 1ng. 
The languages of the Clatsops and the Killamooks were quite differ-
ent from one another, the former of the Chinook linguistic group and the 
latter of the Salish; yet comrmmication between the two was possible in 
the widely used trading language, 'Chinook jargon.' This was a combina-
tion of several languages, including after a while some English and French 
terms, based roughly on the Chinookian language because of that tribe's 
central role in coastal trading. The real Kilchis, however, was not con-
versant in the jargon, as Berry has him be. 176 
The Killamooks lived in large, Illl.lltiple family lodges made of hewn 
planks up to several feet wide. The lodges were built low, but were dug 
174Th · 1 IV 183 4 wa1tes, vo. , pp. - . 
175Thwaites, vol. III, pp. 241-2; Alexander Ross, Adventures of the 
First Settlers on the Oregon or Columbia River (London, 1849), pp. 88-93; 
Cox, vol. I, pp. 69, 303-4. 
176
vaughn, "Settlement," p. 15. For information on the Chinook jar-
gon see Edward H. Thomas, Chinook: A History and Dictionary of the North-
west Coast Trade Jargon (Portland , 1935); George Gibbs, A Dictionary of 
the Chinook Jargon (Washington, 1863); George C, Shaw, The Chinook Jargon 
and How to Use It (Seattle, 1909). Berry utilizes the jargon effectively 
throughout his writings of coastal Indians; he drew one interesting speech 
pattern from the experience of John Frost. Frost claimed that the natives 
found it virtually impossible to pronounce his name, arriving at "Flost" 
instead (Lee and Frost, p . 311); Berry has Trask called "Tlask11· on several 
occasions. 
' 
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74 
out inside to give ample standing room. In addition, the digging provided 
a bench which ran the circumference of the lodge, which was used for sit-
ting and sleeping. All manner of goods, equipment, and foodstuffs "hung, 
lay, or stood in endless variety and confusion. 11177 Berry's descriptions 
of the Nehalem and Killamook lodges are vivid and accurate, except he 
describes the walls as consisting of "cedar planks stuck vertically in 
the ground" (p. 165). Only in the Northern California groups did the 
Indians have vertical plank walls. The Killamooks used horizontal plank-
. 178 1ng. 
Generally the customs and rituals in Trask are true to what is known 
of the practices of the Killamooks and Clatsops and what can be inferred 
from groups in the North. Some of the native customs have been adapted 
by Berry to serve his own purposes, yet such adaptations do not do great 
violence to the historical practice. 
The potlatch had various forms among the different peoples in the 
Northwest and there are more interpretations of its meaning and signifi-
cance than there are forms of it. 179 The potlatch could substitute for 
warfare activity as rivals vied to outdo one another by bestowing gifts 
on each other. It was a method for increasing one's status within the 
band by demonstrating one's ability to distribute wealth. On occasion 
a person would destroy property to show a contempt for wealth or to dem-
onstrate an ability to afford to destroy wealth. A potlatch could be used 
to show esteem for another by giving gifts to recognize another's importance 
177 Gibbs, p. 174. 
178 Newman, p. 84. 
179
see Tom McFeat, ed., Indians of the North Pacific Coast (Seattle, 1967), 
essays by Franz Boas, Helen Codere, H. G. Barnett, and Philip Drucker, pp. 72-
107. 
,, 
I 
I, 
j, 
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75 
and status. There is some dispute whether the actual giving or the sub-
sequent receiving validated a person's status. Some natives used the 
potlatch in rivalry, others in friendship. The competitive potlatch was 
found more in the North, but not necessarily only in the North. Normally 
the potlatch occurred under formal conditions for specific occasions, 
rather than as an impromptu affair, as happens in Trask, but too little 
is verifiable concerning the potlatching of the Indians of the lower 
Northwest to state that Berry's conjectures are not valid. 
Mourning for the dead was limited to the wife or mother of the 
deceased, and was not normally a male function. The women would have the 
duty of wailing for the dead for a set period, and they would have their 
hair cut off just above the ears and a small bunch above each ear tied 
into a 'widow string•. 180 Charley and Trask cut off their forelocks. The 
name of the dead person is not mentioned for a long time, and the deceased 
is referred to as "him-who-died" or "he-who-is-dead. 11181 Those who died 
were placed in canoes with their worldly possessions, which in turn were 
set on raised platforms with the head of the deceased to the west. Lewis 
and Clark noted that the Killamooks placed the bodies in oblong plank boxes 
inside the canoes and rested the canoes on the ground rather than on a plat-
form.182 When a person first died, or was dying, he would be placed in 
a lodge while the shaman attempted to bring his spirit back from the land 
lBOGibbs, p. 211; Pipes, p. 62. 
181Gibbs, p. 210. 
182Bancroft, Native Races, vol. I, p. 246; Gibbs, p. 201; Thwaites, 
vol. III, p. 323. 

76 
183 
of the dead, The band would perform a spirit dance, pounding carved 
poles with deer hoof rattles against the boards at the ridge of the roof. 
The dance would sometimes cont_inue for days while the shaman worked to 
recover the spirit. 184 This practice is counter to the claim that Berry 
makes that the fear of the dead was so intense that the Indians would 
not allow a body to remain long in a lodge. . Such was not the case, unless 
the death occurred at or during the salmon runs; in that case, the dead--
or dying in some instances--were quickly buried, for not to do so would 
interrupt or foreclose a salmon run. Such action stermned from concern 
for their staple crop, not from fear of the dead. There was a taboo 
against disturbing the burial canoes and their contents, but this is dif-
ferent from a fear of the dead themselves. 185 Berry evidently misinter-
preted spawning time fear, either accidently or purposefully, in his effort 
to show the power of Trask's spirit helper in that he was able to have no 
fear of the dead. The Killamooks set great store in the power to travel 
to the spirit land and return, such as Kilchis does for Trask, but not 
186 
· necessarily in the ability to touch or tolerate a dead person. 
The concept of a personal guardian spirit was a basic principle of 
Northwest Coast religion. In order to gain the favor of a spirit hel-per, 
183 Drucker, p. 160. 
184 Drucker, p. 103; Vaughn, "Settlement, 11 pp. 11-2; Franz Boas, 
"Notes on the Tillamook Indians," University of California Publications 
in American Archeology and Ethnology, XX (1923), pp. 13-16. 
185Elizabeth D. Jacobs, compiler, Nehalem Tillamook Tales (Eugene, 
1959), pp. 182-3. The tale of "Two Boys Rob the Dead" tells of two boys 
who have been told that their faces will become twisted if they disturb 
the dead in their canoes. 
186Ibid., "Ice Brings Owls to Nehalem, 11 pp. 12-5. 
fl 
'' 
"' 

77 
a youth would embark on a solitary journey into the woods, on which he 
"cleansed himself of taints offensive to supernatural. beings by fasting, 
bathing in icy pools, scrubbing away the clinging aura of human se·nsual.ity 
with harsh flesh-mortifying bundles of twigs. 11187 While on the Searching 
the youth would seek a vision of his spirit helper: a salmon for a would_: 
be fisherman, a beaver for a canoe maker, a snake or serpent for a 
ta.manawis man. There was not necessarily any requirement that the searcher 
go any certain distance away from the village. The boys would build rock 
piles while on the Searching and there are remains of those piles fairly 
close to the village sites of the Killamooks on the Bay. 188 
Berry draws the Searching of Trask with particular intensity, which 
brings to life the power of the ritual and shows a depth of understanding 
of the Indian view of life. Trask's existence is reduced to its very 
essence, to the depths of his soul, as he endures the trial. His survi-
val. hangs on the tiny spark of fire, the barest minirrrum of life. The 
Searching enables Berry to strip away Trask's ties to his white culture, 
reduce him to near non-existence, then al.low him to grow in spiritual. and 
physical. power, to become strong through an understanding of himself, his 
limits, and his place in the world. For Berry, that is the purpose of 
art: to seek out truth and meaning beneath the sensory experience in 
order to determine ."what man's place in the universal. . process is. 11189 
187 Drucker, p. 158; Jacobs, "Raven and Ice," pp. 15-9. 
188 John Sauter and Bruce Johnson, Tillamook Indians of the Oregon 
Coast (Portland, 1974), fig. 17, p. 36. 
189 Love, "Interview." 
,,, 

78 
IV. USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY 
The power of Trask as a novel derives from the clarity of expression 
with which Don Berry captures the spiritual experience of the Searching. 
From the ethos of the medicine man Charley Kehwa and the mountain man 
Elbridge Trask, Berry distills a syncretistic experience; and he does so 
in a way understandable to a culture that not only does not embrace such 
an experience but also does not have the everyday mechanics to comprehend 
the experience. Except within the confines of religious ecstasy, the 
white European culture does not allow for a spiritual experience, while 
other cultures, Asian, African, and Native American, accept such an exper-
ience as an integral part of the life process. Trask succeeds in trans-
lating that experience into terms that are aclmowledged and accepted in 
western culture. In fact, Berry uses the themes and traditions of the 
American West, demonstrating that, whether recognized or not, the poten-
tial for a spiritual experience lies at the heart of the New World. 
The translation of the mystical union with the environment into 
terms of the West depends on a firm factual foundation. Unless Berry pro-
vides an accurate setting for his novel, the believability--and thus the 
success--of his message will be lost. If the characters, the confronta-
tions, and the settings are not drawn from the historical record, then 
the plausibility of the novel suffers, and the possibility of a convinc-
ing spiritual experience vanishes. 
For the most part, Don Berry presents an accurate portrayal of the 
physical and cultural settings along the coast in 1848, and his characters 
,, 

79 
are not inconsistent with those settings. Wakila and Charley Kehwa are 
coined from the Clatsop society as it was, and as it was portrayed, in 
1848, although t:hey are .on opposite sides of the coin. Wakila is evi-
dently based on the Clatsop youth Wakilkil who accompanied Rev. John 
Frost and Solomon Smith in 1841. Because so little is known of the his-
torical character, however, Berry had a free hand in shaping Wakila, at 
least free within the confines of the Clatsop society at the time. As 
the most fictional character, Charley Kehwa relies not on a historicc0-
person but on the cultural integrity of the Clatsop way of life prior to 
white contact and settlement. In serving a very symbolic role, Charley 
is the repository of the wisdom and logic of the Northwest cultural sys-
tem, At the same time, he is a fully developed and human character, a 
rarity for an Indian .in American literature. · 
Kilchis and Illga are based on actual persons, which provides more 
of a problem. In order to create drama and further the plot, Berry has 
simplified the historical characters into caricatures. Kilchis becomes 
more than a powerful tyee for Berry; he takes on an aura of wisdom and 
power that emanates to those around him; people are immediately in awe 
of him. Yet Frost and Champion did not experience such a feeling when 
they met him. Their characterizations showed a more simple and naive 
nature for him. He was one of the "Poor Fools" of Chanipion's account, 
and he ·was no more powerful in the mind of Frost than Kotata of the Clat-
sops. On the other hand, Kilchis did allow a peaceful settlement in his 
country and worked to avoid conflicts between whites and the Killamooks. 
The mechanism of the accommodation may be conjectural on Berry's part, 
but an accommodation did take place. 

80 
The role of Illga has also been altered from what is lmown about 
his historical character. Regardless of whether Illga had hereditary 
claims as tyee, there is no evidence to indicate any friction between 
Kilchis and him; in fact, there is no reason to suppose that the two 
could not have complemented each other's position. Northwest society 
certainly allowed for a variety of leadership roles. On the other hand, 
human nature being what it is, the two men could have been at odds. It 
is clear, however, that he was not considered to be evil incarnate, as 
Berry's simplified portrayal might have one believe. 
The fictional Elbridge Trask presents a more important question. 
Berry stated in his cormnents in Saturday Review that "Trask, as he appears 
in the book, nru.st be considered fictional, although the background given 
him is factual, and the events of the story are certainly not inconsistent 
with his historical character. 11190 Such a statement is open to discussion, 
a fact that Berry later aclmowledges in an interview. The fictional 
Elbridge Trask in many ways does ring true to his historical counterpart. 
He is somewhat impetuous and impatient, confident in his physical prowess. 
He insists on undertaking the Searching, even under adverse conditions 
and without proper training and preparation. In so doing, he resembles 
the Trask who wanted to rush off to hunt buffalo without resting his hor-
ses, as reported by Osborne Russell. The fictional Trask displays a brood-
ing fascination with the struggle between the rising moon and the storm 
clouds rushing from the west, a fascination reflective of the practical 
curiosity of the Trask who timed the spoutirtgs of a geyser for a day and 
190 Berry, "Comment," p. 17. 
,, 

a night. 
Yet there are points of divergence as well. In the novel, Trask 
appears aloof, alone, and brooding, while in fact he was very sociable 
and outgoing, always in the middle of social gatherings. Heightening 
81 ' 
the effect of- his isolation and the individuality of his endeavor is 
Berry's depopulation of the Trask family. Although retaining Hannah, 
Berry erases the five children the couple had in 1848. (In a balanced 
manner he also eliminates the numerous Smith children, Illga's large 
family, and the four wives of Kilchis. It makes a cleaner story.) On 
perhaps the most crucial point of all, however, the character unfortun-
ately goes astray. The real Trask would not have undertaken the trip on 
his own, for he seldom if ever took a leadership role and did not dis-
play the driven forcefulness that Berry ascribes to him. On the few occa-
sions when he did assume any leadership, circumstances usually thrust the 
role upon him. 
Osborne Russell described him as "a great, easy, good-natured fel-
1 ,.191 ow. Bethenia Owens-Adair recalled that the Trask of her childhood 
on Clatsop Plains had "a big heart and good, generous nature." The gre-
garious Trask would meet most all the in-coming families on Clatsop 
Plains at Tansey Point of Skipanon and invite them down to his home or 
other suitable shelter. 192 Seemingly he was never too busy with his farm 
work to take time off to meet the newcomers, or to undertake something 
more interesting or enjoyable. Like many other former mountain men, Trask 
191 Russell, p. 96. 
1920 Ad . wens- air, p. 236. 

82 
did not take easily to farming. Although never having received any special 
skills in carpentry, he seldom missed a chance to help build a mill. He 
did not seem to take a lead in the mill construction, however, rather he 
followed somebody else's initiative. Once in Tillamook Bay away from his 
brother-in-law and mountain friends, he did not join any mill projects, 
but instead settled into his farming. 193 
When Trask had trapped in the mountains, he had tended to follow 
the lead of Osborne Russell, although we really only have Russell's word 
for it. Yet that in itself is a good indication that Trask was not a 
leader: since no other journal, diary, or reminiscence mentions Tra~k, 
he IIll.lst have played a rather subdued role. Part of his anonymity in the 
mountains can be explained by Russell's assessment of his wilderness 
skills, but Trask's later life demonstrates further his disinclination to 
assume the responsibility of leadership. Furthermore, Trask later showed 
a tendency to misjudge situations and to err in his assessments of the 
abilities of others. This latter pattern is not a dominant one in his 
life, but enough instances are recorded to make it a significant facet of 
his personality and to affect his "historical character." 
Despite Trask's youth in the seafaring town of Beverly, Massachu-
setts, and his several years at sea as an able-bodied seaman, he did not 
serve as captain on the Skipanon when the Clatsop men sailed to Califor-
nia. Captain McEwan was brought into the operation for that role, although 
captains papers were easily obtainable with little formality at the 
193His brother-in-law William Perry did build another mill when he 
moved to Douglas County. Owens-Adair, p. 235. 

83 
time. 194 According to Trask's son-in-law, Warren Vaughn, he did later 
take out papers, but in the interim he sailed a sloop owned by a Mr. Wilson 
of Salem for commercial purposes without them. 195 Thus captain's papers 
were not a stern necessity and, if desired, were easily obtainable. Yet 
Trask avoided the position in 1848-9. 
An incident happened in August of 1846 in which Trask was unable to 
. disarm a drunken man intent on shooting Alexander Lattie of the Hudson's 
Bay Company. John McClure, himself married to a Chinook woman, called 
Lattie's Clatsop wife a "damned whore" whereupon she cut him with a knife. 
McClure got his rifle from his cabin. Trask, who had been on a social 
visit to McClure with Hannah, attempted to take away the gun. He failed 
despite his size, and when the rifle discharged during the struggle, Trask 
and Hannah ran, nearly being hit with ensuing volleys. Trask's lack of 
success is noteworthy in light of the fact that the smaller Lattie returned, 
disarmed McClure, and pushed him over an embankment, despite a bullet wound 
in the arm. 196 
Trask was not the first farmer to leave Clatsop Plains, nor was he 
the first to see the difficulty of farming the area's sandy soil. Solomon 
Smith stopped farming and entered the retail business in Astoria in 1849, 
and William Perry moved his family to the greener pastures of Douglas 
194 The story of Joseph Gale and the Star of Oregon is a case in 
point. See Horace S. Lyman, History of Oregon: The Growth of an American 
State (New York, 1903), vol. III, pp. 209-13. , 
195 
. Vaughn, "Set tl emen t, " p • 7 6 . 
196
vaughn, "Lattie's Journal," p. 235; Ruby and Brown, pp. 203, 212-3. 

84 
County in 1851. 197 It was not until 1852 that Trask reacted to the low 
quality of the soil, a quality that Rev. John H. Frost had noticed as 
early as 1841, and Rev. George H. Atkinson recognized immediately in 
1848, noting in his diary that although potatoes grew in abundance, "the 
soil on Clatsop ... renders the wheat crop poor. 11198 Yet even when 
Trask left the Plains, he did so in the wake of another, this time Nathan 
Dougherty. Unlike Trask, Dougherty assumed a leadership role in the 
affairs of Tillamook Bay for some time to come. 
One might assume that Trask himself had become somewhat of a leader 
when he was elected Justice of the Peace for Tillamook County in 1854. 
A closer examination of the election, however, does not necessarily bear 
out this assumption. Twenty-seven men of 33 legal voters cast ballots 
that June 5th and twelve of them were elected to office . Others received 
votes but did not win office. Trask himself won by only one vote. 199 By 
far the majority of the men in the Bay area were young bachelors, and it 
is therefore not really surprising that those men with families were looked 
upon as cornrmmity leaders, both because of their more settled situations 
and because of their ages. Trask at thirty-nine was one of the elder 
200 
statesmen, yet he was narrowly elected. Trask did not take on an 
office at the next election; a fleeting leadership role at best. 
For the first two years of settlement in Tillamook Bay, the settlers 
19711
solomon H. Smith," p. 88; Owens-Adair, p. 235. 
198Lee and Frost, p. 85; Rockwood, "Atkinson," p. 173. 
199 Vaughn, "Settlement," pp. 43-4. 
2
oolbid., pp. 43, 46; Census of 1854, Tillamook County Pioneer 
Museum. 
, .. , 
,. 
0 
,,:1 
~., 
C :: () 
l • 
ttl 
85 
were particularly dependent upon the sloop of Captain Menes for supplies. 
Trask was generally the man whom Menes contacted about his business in 
the Bay. In 1853 Trask ran the sloop down from Astoria to Tillamook for 
the captain, after which Menes took his boat to San Francisco to sell. 
He was to return to his home in the East, reorganize his affairs, and 
bring west a pre-fabricated steamboat for the coastal trade. He died 
before the project could be carried out, and it was to Trask that the sad 
news came. Trask owed his intermediary role in all probability less to 
any leadership he asserted than to the fact that both he and Captain Menes 
201 hailed from Beverly, Massachusetts. 
That Trask made misjudgements of character is well illustrated by 
several episodes. During an uneasy period of Indian/white relations in 
1855-1856, Trask joined the semi-panic of the other settlers in the Bay 
and took refuge in a fort hastily constructed on a hill on his land, Yet 
the Tillamook Indians remained calm and peaceful, even consenting to turn 
202 
over their firearms to the settlers in exchange for potatoes. 
In 1853 Trask entrusted a large quantity of supplies to three Nehalem 
Indians to take by canoe to Tillamook from Astoria. The Indians used part 
of their advance wages to buy a keg of whiskey and then proceeded to become 
201Ibid., pp. 30, 37. Vaughn claims that Menes came from Beverly, 
Maine, but he must have meant Massachusetts: there is and was no Beverly, 
Maine, but Beverly, Massachusetts, was a thriving sea-town. Trask in all 
probability had known Menes there as a youth, and we can assume that it 
was a Trask family member who sent the news of Menes' death to Elbridge. 
202Ibid,, pp. 72-5; Mary Alderman Bird, untitled MS, Trask File, 
Tillamook County Pioneer Museum (n.d., n.p.), The fort was named Trask 
Fort but it was built as a connmmity effort. The name derives from the 
land where it stood. 

86 
drunk. They capsized the canoe on t he Columbia River bar and lost Trask's 
203 
entire cargo. 
Again, in i858 Trask misjudged the character of the person he chose 
to captain the schooner he built with John and Nelson Higginbotham, the 
former being his son-in-law. On the maiden voyage of the Rosal tha to San : 
Francisco, Captain Harris managed to trade poorly for the cargo and the 
final outfitting work that was done. The result was that the schooner 
was libeled and sold; Trask lost the value of the ship and cargo, without 
. t 204 a penny in re urn. 
Still and all, Elbridge Trask was a likeable and generous man, a 
man who did his part in the community in a practical manner. He brought 
into the Bay area the first ox team and the second plow; he provided his 
tool shed and his few books for a school until more formal arrangements 
could be made; he donated wheat and tallow to the men who built the first 
ship in the Bay; and his house served as the post office for a time and 
205 
was often the scene of get-togethers. 
From the foregoing emerges an Elbridge Trask quite different from 
the fictional character Berry creates. The real Trask was seldom, if ever, 
a leader, and the evidence appears sufficient to say that he would not have 
203vaughn, "Settlement," pp. 31-2. 
204Lewis and Dryden, p. 69; Vaughn, "Settlement," pp. 82-6. Vaughn 
credits Trask with a voyage to San Francisco before hiring Harris to take 
the schooner down, but Lewis and Dryden indicates Harris took the maiden 
voyage. Since the loss was due to contract work being done to finish the 
rigging, Lewi·s and Dryden's story is correct. 
205
vaughn, "Settlement," pp. 30, 34, 51, 57; Fred Lockley, "Impres-
sions and Observations of the Journal Man," Oregon Journal, Sept. 19, 1923, 
(Rhoda Johnson interview); Landis MS. 

87 
initiated a coastal exploration. Berry's handling of the character Trask 
is an abuse of the historical character, for it alters the man in such 
a way as to create confusion not edification. Don Berry conceded in a 
1974 interview that he had done a major revision of the historical Trask 
in his novel: 
As a person, he did not resemble the Trask in the book at all. 
The personal character of the Trask in the book for various 
reasons was developed as I was writing the book. He turned 
out quite different than the Elbridge Trask historically 
had been, and it was not for the purpose of painting an 
accurate portrait of a person that I did the book.206 
While Berry may concede the dissimilarity of the two Trasks in the 
interview, he does not do so in the novel. In fact the opposite is true: 
Berry goes to great lengths to identify his Trask with the original through 
physical, chronological, and personal details . . His size, his age, his New 
England background, his wife, his friends, his presence in Oregon, his 
mountain experiences; all of these tie the two characters together for 
the reader. Such a union would not cause a problem if in fact the two 
were the same character. fut the fictional. character does not form a log-
ical, if conjectural, extension of the historical character. Had Berry 
created a similar independent character, severed from the factual one, he 
would not have altered the power of his novel. In his second novel, 
Moontrap, he creates two characters (Johnson Monday and Old Webb) who are 
no less believable in their roles than Trask, but they are not attached 
to any specific historical characters. 
This problem of the use or abuse of historical characters in a work 
of fiction is a thorny one. On one hand, the author needs to try to hang 
206 Shaeffer, "Interview." 

88 
his sto:ry on historical pegs, some of the best of which are historical 
characters; but on the other hand, the author IID.lst be careful not to dis-
tort the factual record of the historical character. All writers of his-
torical fiction Illllst come to grips with the problem. A. B. Guthrie 
maintains that an author should avoid the use of historical characters 
in the main body of the plot, for a writer will inevitably distort the 
character. Instead, Guthrie attempts to keep the historical characters 
on the sidelines and ascribe to them thoughts and words drawn only from 
th . d. . 1 bl· t' 207 eir own 1ar1es, etters, or pu ica ions. 
An example of such a technique is Guthrie's introduction of Osborne 
Russell into The Big Sky. Russell's thoughts and words are drawn almost 
verbatim from his Journal of a Trapper and thus give an accurate reflection 
of the man. To a lesser extent, Don Ber:ry does the same for Joe Meek in 
Moontrap, drawing reported conversations from Frances Fuller Victor's River 
of the West. He does not limit himself to that, however, but goes on to 
engage Meek in thoughts and situations of his own fabrication. In Trask 
Berry uses some accounts virtually verbatim, but he ascribes the words to 
persons other than the original authors. For example, Solomon Smith 
describes the path around the face of Neahkahnie with the same terms John 
Frost used in his journal; Trask and Wakila stalk the wolf/skunk that 
Warren Vaughn encountered; and Trask recalls his days of hunger in the 
mountains by laying claim to the "hands in the anthill" sto:ry that orig-
inated with Joe Meek. Trask could just as easily have recalled that Meek 
207Guthrie, pp. 55-6; see also Thomas Griffith, "Playing with the 
Facts," Time, Sept. 19, 1977, and "Scandal as Entertainment, it Time, 
Sept. 19, 1977. 

89 
was the one who did it as claim the feat for himself. Historical fiction 
does not require that the novelist include the famous persons of the past, 
and there is not necessarily any loss of authenticity in excluding histor-
ical figures from the main plot and assigning them minor roles. On the 
other hand, inclusion of historical characters does not guarantee an accu-· 
rate setting by any mean, to which too many 'historical' novels in the 
marketplace testify. Inclusion of historical figures does place a further 
burden on the author to guard against distortion. There Illllst be a basis 
in fact for the actions and motivations assigned to historical characters, 
while fictional characters need only have a plausible basis in history. 
The use to which Berry puts Elbridge Trask distorts the historical record 
of a factual person. 
Once past the manipulations of historical characters, Trask reflects 
an effective use of history, rather than an abuse of it. In factual and 
thematic content, Don Berry has used his sources well. The location of 
Clatsop villages and settlers' cabins, the geographical descriptions of 
Clatsop Plains, the Oregon coast, and Tillamook Bay not only reflect what 
is present today, but more important what was there in the late 1840s. 
Berry uses well the problem of soil infertility and stunted growth to pro-
vide a basis for Trask's journey down the coast. The Killamook villages, 
the descriptions of the natives, the material culture of the Indians, and 
the Chinook jargon are all faithful to the historical sources. 
Historical trends and themes are put to use to provide a background 
for the story. The precarious Clatsop existence on the edge of the dom-
inant white society, their loss of cultural integrity in the onslaught of 
white settlement provides Berry with a pathetic Wakila. At heart, Wakila 

90 
has the potential to be a strong Indian, steeped in his Clatsop heritage, 
but because of historical circumstances, he cannot survive. His death 
draws Trask and Charley Kehwa together, and it opens the path for Trask 
to move into a spiritual union with and understanding of the world. That 
path eventually leads to Trask' s Searching and Vision, as well as Charley':s 
death, The Vanishing American is the key for Trask--and, with him, all 
white society--to come to terms with nature. 
The Vanishing American and vanishing wilderness are signs that all 
is not well with the white society. The dying Clatsop band and the stagnat-
ing white settlement provide a base for Berry to examine the tensions 
between settlement and nature. Berry embarks a microcosm of Clatsop Plains, 
with all its historical dynamics, on a journey seeking a new location, a 
new beginning, a new Wl.derstanding.Trask, the restless curious white; 
Wakila, the doomed Clatsop; Charley Kehwa, the repository of the integrity 
of Clatsop heritage; and Doctor McLaughlin, the nimble but aging packhorse, 
carrying on his back the supplies for a new settlement; all travelling 
over Neahkahnie, the body of Kahnie, chief spirit in coastal lore. The 
historical decline of the Clatsops culminates as Doctor slips, pulling 
Wakila to his death, just as the Hudson's Bay Company had brought the means 
for new settlement and in the process interrupted the traditional middleman 
role of the Clatsops and visited destruction on them. The disoriented Clat-
sop, grasping the reins of the packhorse, depending more and more on its 
baggage, cannot maintain his hold on the mountain in which is vested the 
spirit of Kahnie. 
The choice of Neahkahnie for a central role springs from its histori-
cal setting in Indian lore and its mysterious past. Not only did the 

91 
mountain represent the spirit Kahnie for the Indians, but it also was a 
focus of speculation for the settlers in the area. Early records are 
chock full of legends and stories of vast treasures buried on the moun-
tain. 208 Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth century treasure 
seekers have scoured the slopes of Neahkahnie looking for the chests of 
gold supposedly stored there by pirates or shipwrecked crews, driven in 
their search by puzzling inscriptions chiseled in the rock, Berry skill-
fully blends the Neahkahnie of the imagination with the reality of treach-
erous paths to provide a dramatic crossing into the land of the Killamooks, 
the land of the unlmown, the landscape of the soul. 
In a similar manner, Don Berry uses the mystery surrounding the ori-
gin of Kilchis to create a character who is somewhat larger than life. 
Whence came Kilchis? is still an open question, and his dominance of Kill-
amook society as a black tyee is intriguing because of it. 
Berry adds to the aura of mystery and danger by emphasizing the feroc-
ity and isolation of the Killamooks. The success of Trask's and Charley's 
search is in real doubt as they approach the unlmown quantity of the Killa-
rnook band. Berry chose the ominous 'Killamook' over the more neutral 
'Tillamook' or more corrnnon 'Killann.1ck'. Most of the local accounts from 
the time used 'Killann.1ck' although all were in use. Berry evidently chose 
209 the ending for familiarity and the 'k' for effect. _Berry also brings 
208For the best concise report of the basic legends along the north-
ern coast of Oregon, see Clarke, pp. 155-76. 
209A subscriber signed "Philom" suggested to the Oregon Spectator in 
the April 4, 1850, issue that the name should be standardized as 1tTillamook." 
The settlers did just that when they petitioned for formation of a county 
in 1854. 

92 
Lopeus and Murderer's Harbor to bear on the ferocity and W1predictability 
of the Killaniooks, all of which provides a suitably treacherous and 
unknown landscape over which Trask IID.lst accomplish his mission. 
The character of Illga follows in many ways the Killamook man in 
the Nehalem legend of a shiprJI'ecked sailor named Sandy. 210 The sailor is ; 
saved from the ocean waves by Ona, the object of the young Killamook's 
affections. Ona nurses Sandy to health and falls in love with him. Rav-
aged by jealousy and hatred, the Killamook, who is the brother of the 
Killamook chief, plots vengeance against Sandy, but is killed by his 
intended victim. The rage, the hatred, and the bitterness at being 
thwarted in his plans, provide Berry with a historical (of sorts) base 
for the devil incarnate Illga, who is likewise thwarted in his plans. 
In addition to the Neahkahnie, Kilchis, and Nehalem legends, Berry 
draws on the tradition of insider/outsider in the Tillamook Bay area. 
The Killamooks were isolated from the other Indians along the Oregon coast 
both by language and by geography. Although some con:nmmication did take 
place with other Indians, the Killamooks generally stayed within . the con-
fines of the Bay. The settlers who came to the Bay carried on the tradi-
tion in their own way. Mail was sporadic for many years, relying on the 
travels of private individuals for delivery to and from Astoria. Roads 
were difficult and railroads late in being built. Even as late as the 
1930 . "d d t "d 211 s, persons were seen as 1ns1 ers an ou s1 ers. Such a tradition 
provided Berry with a historical setting for exploration, discovery, and 
210 Clarke, pp. 142-54. 
2111da M. Orcutt, Tillamook: Land of Many Waters (Portland, 1951), 
pp. 69-77. 

93 
fulfillment. In Trask nature become s the measure of inside/outside, the 
measure of spiritual rebirth. 
What emerges from Trask is a hero that Leslie Fiedler has called 
the "Essential Westerner," a new man who is neither white nor red and 
who is created in the wilderness by encounter with the Indian mystique. 212 
Trask moves inevitably toward the Indian world and takes his place not as 
a former mountain man, explorer, and harbinger of democratic settlement, 
but as the New Western hero who is aware of his role in history and of 
the costs of the progress he brings. The Vanishing American is no longer 
an obstacle but a vehicle through which the hero replaces the false 
progress of what Berry terms Roman road-building with the true progress 
of union with nature. 
212F. dl 1e er, p. 118; Gurian, p. 136. 

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Typist: Erma B. Robbins 
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