The Zybach Collection · Jedediah Smith
Chronology
51 dated statements, each one traceable to a page of something the creator publishes.
Two runs of dates that belong to one story: what happened in 1826–1830, and what a group of people did about it between 1987 and 2024. The Library built this list; it invented nothing for it. Every entry carries the document it comes from, and most carry a link that lands on the page.
Where the sources disagree, both readings are kept and the disagreement is marked. They disagree about how many men were killed on 14 July 1828 — fourteen or fifteen — and about whether McLoughlin’s report to London is dated 10 or 11 August 1828.
1826–1830 — the expeditions (25)
Where the party was, in its own words and in the creator’s guidebooks. Campsite entries are the headings of his own tables of contents: the name the project gave the place, and the date in 1828. Everything else is quoted from a journal or a letter.
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1826
A Hudson’s Bay Company party under Alexander McLeod meets the coastal communities of the central and southern Oregon coast. The creator calls this “the first known local contact with white people, horses, cloth, metal tools, and guns.”
Zybach to the Oregon Travel Information Council, 27 July 2023, p. 4
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7 August 1826
Smith’s journal of the first expedition to California opens “at our rendezvous at a place known as the bend of Bear River,” where he and his partners Jackson and Sublette agreed to divide the company.
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15 August 1826
Harrison G. Rogers begins his first journal with the inventory of merchandise “taken by Jedediah S. Smith for the Southwest expedition.”
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12 July 1827
Smith writes to William Clark, Superintendent of Indian Affairs at St Louis. The letter is entered in the superintendent’s letterbook and reprinted in the Missouri Republican that October.
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13 July 1827
“My preparations being made I left the Depo on the 13th July 1827 with eighteen men and such supplies as I needed.” The second expedition to California begins.
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2 May 1828
The party’s camp is recorded at Hogback Ridge.
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10 May 1828
Rogers opens his second journal with the roll of the men travelling with Smith, and the day’s march: “several very steep, rocky and brushy points of mountains to go up and down.”
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19 May 1828
The party’s camp is recorded at Gans Prairie.
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26 May 1828
The party’s camp is recorded at Blue Creek Mountain.
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23 June 1828
The party’s camp is recorded at the Winchuck River.
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27 June 1828
The party’s camp is recorded at the Rogue River.
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2 July 1828
The party’s camp is recorded at the Coquille River.
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6 July 1828
The party’s camp is recorded at Sunset Bay.
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9 July 1828
Rogers: “We crossed in Ind. canoes; a great many Inds. live along the river bank; there houses built after the fashion of a shed. A great many Inds. in camp with fish and berris for sale; the men bought them as fast as they brought them.” The creator chose this passage for the top of the proposed interpretive sign.
Harrison G. Rogers, 9 July 1828, as quoted in Bob Zybach’s sign draft of 20 October 2023, p. 1
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12 July 1828
The party’s camp is recorded at Umpqua Bay.
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13 July 1828
The last entry in Rogers’s journal. The creator’s guidebook heads the day “Defeat River.”
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14 July 1828
The attack. The creator’s guidebooks describe “the site near the confluence of the Smith and Umpqua Rivers where fourteen of Smith’s men were surprised and killed by Kelawatsets while in camp, preparing to continue their journey to Fort Vancouver,” and add: “You may be surprised to learn that early accounts of the attack may not tell the whole story.” His project index gives the number as fifteen; his second field report calls it “the 14 or 15 beaver trappers killed near here.”
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8 August 1828
Arthur Black reaches Fort Vancouver at ten at night, “in his opinion at the time, the only survivor.”
John McLoughlin’s report, dated 11 August 1828 in Bob Zybach’s sign draft of 20 October 2023, p. 3
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10 August 1828
McLoughlin writes to the Honourable Committee of the Hudson’s Bay Company that Smith’s men have been “massacred by the Natives of the Um[p]qua River.”
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26 August 1828
McLoughlin sends Michel La Framboise, Thomas McKay and six other servants to the Umpqua to search for survivors and recover the property.
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6 September 1828
Alexander Roderick McLeod’s journal of the recovery expedition opens.
Journal of Alexander Roderick McLeod, 6 September – 10 December 1828
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19 October 1828
The party’s camp is recorded at Fort Umpqua.
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28 October 1828
McLeod: “Stoped at the entrance of the North Branch, where Mr. Smiths Party were destroyed, and a Sad Spectacle of Indian barbarity presented itself to our View, the Skeletons of eleven of those Miserabl Sufferers lying bleaching in the Sun, after paying the last Service to their remains we continued forward and made the Coast, no Indians in the Vicinity, contrary to their former Custom as several Villages used to be about this place, the Natives are now more Collected than formerly.” Eleven of the dead were buried that day. The creator’s guidebook heads the entry “Umpqua Burials.”
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26 December 1828
George Simpson writes to Smith from Fort Vancouver. The letter opens the fourth guidebook.
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29 October 1830
Smith, Jackson & Sublette report to the Secretary of War. The creator’s guidebook dates the letter to Eaton 30 October 1830; the file of the letter itself is dated 29 October.
Guidebook #4, contents, p. 9; Smith, Jackson & Sublette to the Secretary of War
1987–2024 — the memorial project (26)
What the project did, from a student draft in an English department to a bronze plaque on a stone. Every line traces to a page of something the creator publishes.
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14 December 1987
Bob Zybach submits “A. Black, Jedediah Smith, and the Location of the Hudson’s Bay Company Pack Trails in Northwest Oregon in 1828” to the Department of English at Oregon State University.
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20 July 2000
“The 1828 Umpqua Memorial Project had its official beginning on July 20, 2000 with a front page headline article in The Reedsport Courier about a series of local events centered on the history of Jedediah Smith.” The article quotes Wayne Knauf, James C. Auld, Al LePage, Portia Harris and Tom Hedgepeth. “A prayer and wreath was cast in the water while the names of the slain trappers were read.”
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2001
“The following year Knauf was joined in his research by good friend and business associate, Don Whereat, another Smith enthusiast and Quuiich Tribal Historian. Whereat was local and field mapped the July 13 and 14 routes most likely taken by Smith and his men.”
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10 February 2023
Zybach presents the coming Rendezvous to the Northwest Chapter of the Oregon-California Trails Association.
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25 March 2023
Five indexed GIS map sheets are completed for the guidebooks by Vyla Grindberg of Douglas County GIS.
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26 March 2023
The four Rendezvous guidebooks are dated.
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29 March 2023
The Oregon Commission on Historic Cemeteries confirms in writing that “the Smith Jackson & Sublette Burial Site in Douglas County is listed with the Oregon Commission on Historic Cemeteries.”
Kuri Gill, Historic Cemeteries Program Coordinator, to Bob Zybach, 29 March 2023
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2 April 2023
The Jedediah Smith Society 2023 Rendezvous begins at Crescent City. It runs four days, to Fort Vancouver.
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3 April 2023
On the second day the party visits the ground at the mouth of the Smith River. “Consensus discussion was that a monument or marker should be established to honor the dead buried there.”
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4 April 2023
At Champoeg on the third day, ORWW director David Gould offers to donate a large stone for the memorial.
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8 April 2023
Zybach reports on the Rendezvous to the Northwest Chapter of the Oregon-California Trails Association in a forty-seven-slide presentation.
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2 May 2023
A canine search is made for the trappers’ graves, with Max, a trained cadaver dog handled by Cathy Schneider of Northwest Canine Resources. Six photographs are filed. The Library registers the search and does not publish its findings or its ground.
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4 May 2023
Cathy Schneider files a report and a field map on the search. Both are described here and neither is reproduced.
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22 May 2023
Zybach’s account of the Rendezvous appears as the lead article of Castor Canadensis, the Journal of the Jedediah Smith Society, vol. 2 no. 1.
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14 June 2023
Zybach, David Gould and Dale Hanson choose the memorial stone at the Main Rock quarry at North Bend and settle on an inset bronze plaque.
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21 June 2023
The stone is loaded at the quarry by Main Rock, hauled by Coos Bay Timber Operators and set by Mast Brothers. “The Memorial stone and all related time, equipment, and services have been entirely donated to this point by these three local businesses.”
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20 July 2023
Zybach speaks to the Culture Committee of the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians and writes the same evening summarising the four parts of the project, inviting the Tribes to co-sponsor the memorial stone and saying: “The more Tribal involvement in these observations, the better.”
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27 July 2023
The Umpqua Memorial Committee asks the Oregon Travel Information Council to replace the Bolon Island highway panel with one “more accurate historically and relevant locally.”
Zybach to Beth Dehn, Oregon Travel Information Council, 27 July 2023, p. 1
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1 August 2023
The Oregon Travel Information Council’s historical marker committee papers are dated. Thirty-three pages; a third-party document, identified by reference.
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17 October 2023
Larry Hager of Bronzecraft Memorials at Wamic holds the finished bronze plaque. The mould is poured at 2,300 to 2,400 degrees.
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18 October 2023
Stu Richardson of Richardson Masonry, Reedsport, cuts the stone to take the plaque and installs it.
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26 October 2023
Lori Tobias reports on the project for OregonLive; the piece runs in The Oregonian the next day.
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28 October 2023
The memorial stone is dedicated at sunset, on the 195th anniversary of the burial. The names of the men killed on 14 July 1828 are read and a moment of silence kept. “Sunset was just a few minutes after the rising of full moon on this date.”
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31 October 2023
David Rupkalvis reports the dedication on the front page of The World at Coos Bay.
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6 November 2023
The third photographic report is published. Its last page announces a fourth, on the construction and installation of the memorial sign kiosk. No fourth report is in the creator’s published folder.
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12 November 2023
The last of the interpretive-sign design files is posted. The sign itself is not recorded as installed in the creator’s published folder.
Historical Markers, Smith River, Sign, Design folder — file dates
What is not dated here
Nothing in this chronology says where anything happened, beyond the river mouth, the towns and the public places the creator names himself. The entries for the canine search of 2 May 2023 and for the report that followed it record that they happened, who did them and when; they record nothing about the ground.
Two things this series does not record, though a reader might expect them: whether the interpretive sign was ever installed, and what answer the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians gave to the invitation of July 2023. The creator’s published files carry neither, and the Library will not supply an ending it has not been given.
Provenance
- Built by
- America’s School Trust Library, from the creator’s published files
- Sources
- The Smith and Rogers journals, McLoughlin’s and McLeod’s papers, the four 2023 guidebooks, the three photographic reports, the sign drafts, and the creator’s own project index
- Method
- Every entry is either a quotation with its page or a statement of what a named document records. Nothing is inferred, and nothing is dated from memory.
- The creator’s pages
- orww.org/1828_Umpqua_Memorial/
Series · The 1828 record · People · Historical markers · Submit a correction
