(On a journey started in 1845, Palmer kept this journal co...)
On a journey started in 1845, Palmer kept this journal containing descriptions of the valleys of the Willamette, Umpqua, and Clamet. Includes tables of about 300 words of the Chinook language and about 200 words of the Nez Perc language.
Joel Palmer was born on October 4, 1810 in Elizabethtown, Ontario, Canada. He was the son of Quaker parents, Ephraim and Hannah (Phelps) Palmer, who had moved across the line from the state of New York. He was a descendant of Walter Palmer who in 1630 emigrated from Nottingham, England, to Plymouth colony and died in Stonington, Connecticut, then in the province of Massachusetts Bay. Through his mother he was a descendant of William Phelps, one of the founders of Windsor, Connecticut Taken back to New York state with his family at the outbreak of the War of 1812, he lived in Lewis and Jefferson counties until he was about sixteen.
Career
Joel Palmer went to Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where he worked on canals and other public works. In 1836 he removed to Indiana, where he was a contractor for the Whitewater canal, settled at Laurel in Franklin County, and bought land. He was a representative in the state legislature for two terms, from 1843 to 1845, and in the spring of 1845 started across the plains to Oregon. On the way he kept a day-to-day journal that was published in 1847 as Journal of Travels over the Rocky Mountains. With only such literary charm as inheres in the sincerity and drama of his record, the Journal was for a decade an important guidebook to overland immigrants for information concerning equipment for the journey and such details of the route as the location of suitable camping places, springs, and grassy oases. It remains the most complete record of pioneering along the old Oregon trail.
The next year he returned to Indiana and in the spring of 1847, with his family, started on his second journey to the Pacific Northwest. Shortly after his second arrival in Oregon, he served as commissary-general of the volunteer forces in the Cayuse War and was a member of a commission to persuade neighboring tribes not to join the Cayuse. In the autumn of 1848 he went to California. On his return to Oregon he laid out the town of Dayton on his land claim in what is now Yamhill County, built a gristmill, and settled down to improve his holdings.
In 1853 he became superintendent of Indian affairs for the Oregon Territory and bent his enormous energy and personal magnetism to the difficult task of obtaining all their lands from the Indians without creating enough dissatisfaction among them to cause a war. He was a negotiator of nine of the fifteen treaties of cession made between November 29, 1854, and December 21, 1855, and he carried on his duties during the Yakima War led by Kamaiakin and Leschi. In 1857 he was removed from office, not so much because his negotiations had not prevented an Indian uprising as because the settlers resented his restraint and his consideration for the Indians in carrying out his reservation policy. He was active in projects for the development of the community, opened one of the routes to British Columbia gold mines, was a director and, for a time, president of the Oregon City Manufacturing Company, and was one of the promoters of the Clackamas Railroad Company and of the Oregon Central Railroad Company. He was speaker of the state House of Representatives in 1862 and a member of the state Senate from 1864 to 1866. In 1870 he was defeated as the Republican candidate for governor. He died at his home in Dayton on June 9, 1881.
(On a journey started in 1845, Palmer kept this journal co...)
Politics
In politics, Joel Palmer came to Oregon as a Democrat, but by the time of the Civil War, he had become a Republican and an active Unionist.
Views
Joel Palmer had a reputation as a defender of Indian people.
Connections
Joel Palmer was married, first in 1830 to Catherine Caffee and second, after her death, to Sarah Ann Derbyshire on January 21, 1836. He had seven children.