Richard H. Engeman | Research Files: The Jefferson Peace Medal: Provenance and the Collections of the Oregon Historical Society | Oregon Historical Quarterly, 107.2

RESEARCH FILES

The Jefferson Peace Medal

Provenance and the Collections of the Oregon Historical Society

by Richard H. Engeman

THE VALUE AND SIGNIFICANCE of a historical artifact is based on a number of factors, ranging from what it is, what materials comprise it, and how was it used to the story of whose hands it passed through along the way. One of the most illustrious artifacts in the collections of the Oregon Historical Society is a Jefferson peace medal associated with the 1803–1806 Lewis and Clark Expedition. The medal is fragile. A newspaper article described it as "badly battered and broken," and a 1984 curator's report stated its condition this way: "Very poor. Smashed, bad split at bottom along front of shoulder of obverse profile and large fragment missing...."¹ Despite the medal's shattered physical condition, it retains a high value because of its association with Lewis and Clark and with the Society's own history: the medal is the basis for its corporate seal.

Curators speak of an object's provenance, referring to the history of how the object came to be in the possession of an institution. Documenting provenance is part of the process of authenticating an object, and it is provenance that often gives value and meaning to otherwise ordinary things. The provenance of the Jefferson peace medal begins with Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, who distributed such medals to Indian leaders during their 1803–1806 Expedition as tokens of federal goodwill. The occasion of the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark Expedition and the national exhibit that the Missouri Historical Society mounted to mark that event caused the Oregon Historical Society to take a new and careful look at the Jefferson peace medal in its collections. I undertook to locate and evaluate all the information I could find about the medal to try to find out how, when, where, and through whom the medal came to the Society.

Medals similar to the Jefferson medals were used by British and Spanish authorities in the eighteenth century as tokens of peace and emblems of influence and authority with American Indians, usually in association with flags and other gifts. The American government first issued medals for this purpose during the administration of John Adams (1797–1801), when a number of silver and copper medals were struck in England. Some of those medals were still on hand when Lewis and Clark prepared for their expedition to the Pacific in 1804, and they took fifty-five of these with them, of three different designs. They also took medals of a newer design that was first issued in 1801.

The small Jefferson peace medal in the Oregon Historical Society collections is about 55mm in diameter. It is fragile and badly damaged, and its wooden core has disintegrated.

OHS neg., OrHi 100141 and OrHi 100142

The new design had a bust of Thomas Jefferson on one side and the clasped hands of an Indian and a U.S. Army soldier on the other. A crossed tomahawk and calumet (pipe) was depicted above the hands, with the legend "Peace and Friendship." The medals were sized in diameters of 105mm, 75mm, and 55mm. Probably because the early dies could not produce solid silver medals, these were made of two thin silver discs, held together by a silver rim with a wooden core. The Corps of Discovery carried thirty-two Jefferson peace medals: three of the large size, thirteen of the medium size, and sixteen of the small size. In all, Lewis and Clark passed out some eighty-seven medals to Indian leaders along their route from the Missouri to Fort Clatsop and back.² The current location of the vast majority of these medals is unknown. Some are family possessions, and a few are in institutions.

THE OREGON HISTORICAL SOciety acquired its medal — one of the small 55mm Jefferson designs — soon after it was organized on December 17, 1898. The new Society almost immediately engaged George H. Himes as its secretary and de facto curator. Himes was a Portland printer and a well-known amateur historian. He had long been a driving force in the Oregon Pioneer Association, an organization founded in 1873 to memorialize the early immigration of whites to Oregon.³

Between 1913 and 1917, the Oregon Historical Society occupied this storefront office on what is now Southwest Second Avenue, between Taylor and Salmon Streets. George H. Himes (right) is pictured with J.S. Greenfield, the assistant curator for the Society.

OHS neg., OrHi 26141

Himes took up his new duties with vigor, and one of his first initiatives was to acquire the Jefferson peace medal that he knew was in the possession of Winslow B. Ayer, a prominent Portland businessman and a new lifetime member of the Oregon Historical Society. Himes's successful acquisition of the medal is recorded in the Proceedings of the Society's first annual meeting on December 19, 1899:

74. Jefferson Medal (silver) — Found on the Nez Perce Indian reservation, Idaho, and given to Major E. McNeill, for some time manager of the O.R.&N. Co., and by him given to W.B. Ayer; he in turn gave it to the Society, and it was adopted as its seal.⁴

This record of the medal's provenance seems to be straightforward if a trifle vague, but there is another document in the Society's curatorial files relating to the medal — an undated, unsigned typescript that is clearly the work of George Himes. It was probably prepared several years after the donation, perhaps in the 1910s, and is headed "Brief History of the Lewis and Clark Medal and its Adoption as the Seal and Book Plate of the Oregon Historical Society."

I was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Oregon Historical Society December 31, 1898, and instructed to canvass for memberships in the Society and for the collection by gift of materials germane to the purpose of the Society. My service in that connection began on January 9, 1899.
Within a few weeks Mr. W.B. Ayer was called upon for a membership and he responded with a Life Membership very quickly. Then I said to him, "Mr. Ayer, I have heard that some of the engineers of the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company, while on duty during the eighties, visited an island in the Columbia river near Wallula one Sunday to search for Indian relics. As they were slowly walking along a few feet apart, stirring the surface sand with their canes this Medal was found, and some time later it was presented to you. Could you not be prevailed upon to give it to the Oregon Historical Society?"
"Certainly," he said; and taking the Medal from his placed it in my hands.⁵

While both accounts have the medal being handed from Winslow B. Ayer to the Oregon Historical Society, they differ significantly about where the medal was found and contain details that are potentially in conflict. To answer questions raised in the two documents, additional research was needed to determine W.B. Ayer's involvement, including how the medal came to him.

Winslow B. Ayer, born in Maine in 1860, immigrated to Portland in 1883, where he established the Portland Cordage Company. He formed the Western Lumber Company in the 1890s, and in about 1900 merged it with the Eastern Lumber Company to form the Eastern & Western Lumber Company. Ayer joined the prestigious Arlington Club in 1884; he served on its board in 1895–1896 and was president in 1897. Ayer was a founder of the Portland Art Association, served as president of the Library Association of Portland, and became a life member of the Oregon Historical Society in 1899.⁶

Both records in the curatorial files indicate that Ayer obtained the Jefferson peace medal from an official of the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company (OR&N), and one of the accounts names that official as Maj. Edwin McNeill. Both accounts suggest that the medal was found by railroad workers, who gave it to McNeill. McNeill was a West Point graduate and career railroad man who came west to take the position of general superintendent of the Oregon Railway & Navigation Co. (OR&N) on August 15, 1890, with his headquarters in Portland. He left to take a position with the Iowa Central Railroad in July 1891 but returned to Portland in July 1894 as receiver for the OR&N, which was then in bankruptcy. The company emerged from its complex bankruptcy on August 17, 1896, at which time McNeill was named president and a director of the new company. Further corporate machinations caused McNeill's ouster after June 30, 1897, and he seems to have left Portland, and the Union Pacific system, shortly thereafter.⁷

While in Portland in 1890–1891, McNeill apparently lived in the newly built Portland Hotel; for at least part of his later residence in the city, he lived at the Arlington Club.⁸ I could not establish any direct link between Ayer and McNeill, but both were prominent in Portland business and social circles in the 1890s and certainly must have met one another. Ayer's mills shipped over McNeill's Union Pacific rails, and the two interacted at the Arlington Club.

Portland businessman and art patron W.B. Ayer is pictured here in about 1920.

OHS neg., OrHi 67050

According to George Himes's unpublished statement, the Jefferson peace medal had been found "one Sunday" in the 1880s on an island in the Columbia River near Wallula. In the published account, no site was mentioned, and the place was given as "the Nez Perce Indian Reservation, Idaho." Was there a way to resolve the discrepancies?

ONE WAY TO TRY TO PINPOINT the time and place of the medal's discovery was to look at records of the OR&N's construction activity in the Wallula area and on the Nez Perce Reservation in the 1880s and 1890s. Located near the confluence of the Snake and Columbia Rivers, the town of Wallula was a pivotal point in the early transportation history of the Pacific Northwest. As a landing for the Oregon Steam Navigation Company's riverboats, Wallula was a transfer point for freight and passengers between Portland and the gold-mining areas of Idaho and western Montana in the 1860s. A narrow-gauge railroad was built from Wallula to Walla Walla in 1873–1875, and the transcontinental Northern Pacific built westward toward the area in the 1870s. Wallula was connected by rail to Portland by 1882, to Minneapolis by 1883, and to Salt Lake City and Omaha in 1884, while a network of NP and UP subsidiary and branch lines began to fan out to Starbuck, Riparia, Colfax, Pomeroy, Moscow, and Spokane between 1881 and 1889. Several of those lines crossed traditional Nez Perce lands in Washington state and, barely, Idaho.

Many railroad lines were surveyed but not immediately built. West Shore magazine reported in May 1888: "There is much activity along [the] Snake river and in the Palouse region in the matter of railroad building. The OR&N company is extending its line up the south bank of Snake river from Riparia to Lewiston, with the ultimate intention of reaching to magnificent agricultural district of Camas prairie" in Nez Perce country. Although it was surveyed in 1888, the line was not actually built until 1908. The NP and UP systems were both financially overtaxed by their construction efforts, and the national financial problems of the 1890s further slowed railroad expansion. Railroad engineers often worked in areas where actual construction activity took place later, or not at all.⁹

The Arlington Club occupied this building at Southwest Park and Alder between 1892 and 1910.

OHS neg., CN 007776

In the end, none of my research into the history of railroad construction in the region turned up any account of the discovery of a Jefferson peace medal by railroad workers. There was also no clear indication of surveying or engineering work by UP forces "on the Nez Perce Indian Reservation in Idaho" during the time in question.

My attention shifted back to the Wallula area, the nexus of extensive railroad surveying and construction from the early 1870s into the early 1890s. Two additional published sources linked the Society's Jefferson medal to the Wallula area: a brief reference in the History of the Expedition Under the Command of Lewis and Clark by Elliott Coues (1893) and a curious account by Emory Strong in his Stone Age on the Columbia River (1959).

A transcription and annotation of the Lewis and Clark journals, Coues's History contributed to a growing interest in the history of the Expedition. Coues (1842–1899) was best known as a naturalist and ornithologist who wrote for a general audience. In retracing Lewis and Clark's trek, he noted the October 19, 1805, visit to the Corps by seven Walla Wallas, including a chief named Yelépt. Lewis and Clark presented one of the small medals to Yelépt at this time at a location that corresponds to Himes's "island in the Columbia river near Wallula." Coues also included a footnote:

Accent Yel-lept'; Yelleppit of p. 645; his medal found last year on an island about mouth of Wallawalla River (James Wickersham, in lit.)¹⁰

The notation "last year" is ambiguous; the 1893 publication date of Coues's book suggests that the medal was found in 1892 or 1891. The Latin in lit. presumably refers to correspondence or writings from James Wickersham to Coues. Wickersham (1857–1939), an attorney and avid student of local history, had settled in Tacoma, Washington Territory, in 1883, and moved to Alaska in 1900, where he practiced law and thrice served as the territorial representative to Congress between 1909 and 1933. Unfortunately, the inventory for the small collection of extant, locatable Coues papers at the Smithsonian Institution Archives suggests that there is nothing in the papers from Wickersham. There is also no reference to any correspondence with Coues or to a Jefferson medal in the two large collections of Wickersham papers.¹¹

In his Stone Age on the Columbia River (1959), Emory Strong states:

In the 1890's a large Jefferson medal was found in a grave on a small island, possibly Goat Island, near Wallula; this may have been the large one given to Chief Yel-lep-pit as this was near his village. It is now in possession of the Oregon Historical Society.

Earlier in his narrative, Strong noted that Lewis and Clark had given Yelépt one of the small medals on their downriver trip and had promised him a large one on their return: "since they stayed overnight with this chief on their return it is highly likely that they fulfilled their obligation, although they do not specifically say so in their Journals." Lewis and Clark scholars such as Gary Moulton have also concluded that Yelépt probably received two of the medals, one small and one large.¹²

This OHS logo, published on the cover of the 1900 Proceedings of the Oregon Historical Society, was the original derivation of the Jefferson peace medal.

THE ACCOUNT THAT GEORGE Himes left in the curatorial files of the Society — putting words into the mouth of the man who donated the medal, W.B. Ayer — most likely approaches the closest to the truth about its discovery and subsequent history. One or more workers for the OR&N, probably in the early 1890s (or perhaps the late 1880s), discovered one of the small Jefferson peace medals that Lewis and Clark had distributed to tribal leaders. Very possibly, it was one of those given to Yelépt of the Walla Walla. It is likely that the medal was found along the Columbia River near Wallula on an island that was used for Indian burials (there were several such islands in the Columbia), while the finder or finders were seeking Indian relics or grave goods. Although the medal may have been accidentally dropped or deliberately discarded on the island, in all likelihood it was placed there deliberately. The railroad workers passed the medal to the company's overseer, who for much of the early 1890s was Major McNeill. He then presented it to a prominent Portland philanthropist, who appreciated its historical value and gave it to the Society.

In the end, I discounted the story of the medal's provenance as it was described in the Society's official Proceedings in 1899 and accepted the version that Himes later placed in the Society's files. We still do not know exactly when or where the medal was found, but the outline is now clear. Himes likely wrote up his encounter with Ayer and placed it in the curatorial files to correct the published account, adding weight to the information it conveys.

The values inherent in such medals — historical, diplomatic, cultural, aesthetic, financial — have been variable and specific to time, place, and circumstance. Despite its battered condition and its ambiguous provenance, the Oregon Historical Society's Jefferson medal is a valuable artifact that directly connects us — the Oregon Historical Society and all Oregonians — with the Lewis and Clark Expedition and its charge to treat with Indian nations in peace and friendship.

Notes

^1. "Medallion given by the explorers," Curator's files, acc. #84–84, Research Library, Oregon Historical Society, Portland [hereafter OHS Research Library]; Oregonian, July 7, 1905

^2. The history of American peace medals can be found in Francis Paul Prucha, Indian Peace Medals in American History (Madison: Wisconsin Historical Society, 1971), esp. 16–24, 90–95.

^3. Amanda Laugesen, "George Himes, F.G. Young, and the Early Years of the Oregon Historical Society," Oregon Historical Quarterly 101:1 (Spring 2000): 18–39.

^4. Oregon Historical Society, Proceedings, 1900, 69.

^5. Proceedings of the Oregon Historical Society (Salem: W.H. Leeds, 1900), 69; "Medallion given by the explorers," OHS Research Library. The minutes of the Society's board of directors, December 16, 1899, records the agreement with William Klumpp to produce "a seal and a die for a bookplate for the Society, the same to be modeled from the face and reverse, respectively, of the Lewis and Clark medal given to the Society by W.B. Ayer, Esq., with scroll added...." The seal — which is actually modeled on the reverse of the medal — appears on the cover of the first issue of the Oregon Historical Quarterly in March 1900. The bookplate used the same design.

^6. Joseph Gaston, Portland, Oregon, Its History and Builders (Portland, Ore.: S.J. Clarke, 1911), 192; R.L. Polk & Co., Portland City Directory, 1890, 1891, 1894–1897; Oregon Journal, March 5, 1935; Oregonian, March 5, 1935; Oregon Journal, March 8, 1935. Both the Library Association of Portland and the Portland Art Museum received substantial bequests when Ayer died in 1935. The main wing (1932) of the Portland Art Museum is named for him.

^7. Morning Oregonian, January 1, 1896; Jeff Asay, Union Pacific Northwest: the Oregon–Washington Railroad & Navigation Company (Edmonds, Wash.: Pacific Fast Mail, c.1991), 63–73; R.L. Polk & Co., Portland City Directory, 1891, 1895, 1896.

^8. R.L. Polk & Co., Portland City Directory, 1896.

^9. West Shore, May 1888, 285. The convoluted chronology of railroad surveying and construction in the region is set forth in Asay, Union Pacific Northwest, esp. 329–30. The extensive papers of railroad auditor Frank B. Gill at the Oregon Historical Society, MS 1591, were also helpful, as were the historical articles Gill prepared for the Portland-area employees' magazine of the Union Pacific System, the Pacific Semaphore, in 1914–1915.

^10. Elliot Coues, History of the Expedition under the Command of Lewis and Clark, vol. 3 (New York: Francis P. Harper, 1893), 970. A popular retracing of the Lewis and Clark Expedition was published at the instigation of the Northern Pacific. See Olin D. Wheeler, The Trail of Lewis and Clark, 1804–1904 (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, The Knickerbocker Press, 1904). This account mentions (p. 124, "at the mouth of the Walla Walla River") the medal described by Coues and also recounts (pp. 122–24) the discovery of another 55mm Jefferson medal on the Clearwater River during the construction of a Northern Pacific railroad line in 1899. Found in an Indian grave, the medal was given to the American Museum of Natural History in 1901. See also James D. Speer, unpublished report prepared for the Nez Perce National Historical Park, April 1, 2002.

^11. On-line finding aid, Elliott Coues papers, Smithsonian Institution Archives, record unit 7344. There are papers of James Wickersham at the Alaska State Historical Library, Juneau, and at the Washington State Historical Society, Tacoma; no correspondence with Coues was found in either collection; Kay Shelton e-mail to author, August 2, 2004, and Joy Werlink, e-mail to author, August 4, 2004.

^12. Emory Strong, Stone Age on the Columbia River (Portland, Ore: Binfords & Mort, 1959), 208; Gary E. Moulton, The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1988), 5:301–7.

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