Jim Saules: African-American pioneer in Wahkiakum County

Editor’s note: Recently, there has been discussion in our communities about changing the names of geographical features in the Brookfield area. The features incorporate the name Jim Crow, which has several historical references, most notably to the system of segregation and oppression of African Americans. The names most likely stem from the presence of an African American who lived and worked along the lower Columbia, Jim Saules. Eagle Reporter Diana Zimmerman went looking for background on Saules and found this information and text which are taken from “Dangerous Subjects”: James D. Saules and the Enforcement of the Color Line in Oregon, a thesis by Kenneth Robert Coleman, who received an MA in history from Portland State University in 2014.

James Saules was a free black man, born in the United States. In 1839, while in Peru, he joined the United States Exploring Expedition led by Charles Wilkes, a Navy lieutenant. There were six ships and a crew of 400 to explore and survey a vast area, including the South Pacific and the Pacific Northwest.

“According to those either who knew or wrote about him,” Coleman wrote, “Saules fit the profile of the worldly, versatile, and independent black sailor. He was capable of maneuvering between various communities and cultures, while employing various means of survival.”

One man believed Saules came from Virginia. How he came to be in Peru, no one is certain, but in 1846, “Saules told US Navy Lieutenant Neil M. Howison that he had followed the sea 20 years.”

At the time, sailing was one world in which a black man could make the same wage as anyone and be free from the “deeply racist society” at home. A multi-ethnic crew was not unusual.

Saules worked as a cook on one of the ships, the Peacock, for two years. He saw places like Antarctica, Tahiti, Hawaii and the Fiji Islands before the Peacock failed to cross the Columbia Bar and wrecked in 1841.

Desertion was a regular occurrence, and Saules was one of three that left the service after the shipwreck. The commander of the Peacock believed that Saules had fallen in love with a Chinookan woman.

Saules never returned to the sea.

Suddenly he was a man with options. He could have headed back east where there were few opportunities for a free black man; where he could risk being sold back into slavery by unscrupulous men looking for easy money. Instead he chose to stay in the northwest where the “racial caste systems had not yet ossified.” A government had not been established and therefore, neither had racist laws.

Saules built a cabin near what is now Fort Canby, and a year after his desertion, he began a boat service between Cathlamet and Astoria.

“His craft was a small fore-and-aft schooner in which he carried passengers, livestock and miscellaneous freight,” Coleman wrote. “Traveling between these locations was not an easy task in 1842, as the Columbia had no channel improvements, dams, or levees. Therefore, Saules must have been a skilled and knowledgeable navigator. According to author E.W. Wright, ‘[Saules] continued in this trade for a considerable length of time and made money.’ This was four years before James Birnie, the Hudson Bay Company employee who helped the crew of the Peacock at Fort George, moved his family from Fort George and established a trading post at Cathlamet.”

The following year, Saules moved his wife and family to the Willamette Valley. He purchased a farm and a horse from a friend. At the same time, the Great Migration of 1843 had begun, and hundreds of white settlers were headed west to claim land alongside him.

Or maybe not.

“The overland settlers also brought a distinct ideology that had a dramatic effect on regional laws, notions of property rights, and race relations,” Coleman wrote. “Their plan was to create a self-contained agrarian settlement with little use for the region’s indigenous population.”

It was a time when the settlers were afraid that “Natives would not respect their property rights” and the “Natives” were “justifiably convinced that the newly arrived settlers would appropriate their lands.”

New laws regarding property were imposed, and clashing cultures lead to misunderstandings. One incident involved a member of the Wasco Tribe named Cockstock who retaliated when a relative was flogged for entering the home of a local missionary. Walking into anyone’s home was an accepted custom, as was retaliation, for Native Americans.

Cockstock had been working the land for the man who eventually sold the farm to Saules. He may have even continued to work for Saules after the exchange. Bad feelings arose when the man sold Saules the horse that he had promised to give to Cockstock for all his labor.

Cockstock stole the horse and then harassed Saules and the other man for months. Saules wrote a letter to Dr. Elijah White, who had earlier “announced to settlers that the U.S. War Department had assigned him as subagent to the Natives of the region.”

“SIR: I beg leave to inform you that there is an Indian about this place, of the name of ‘Cockstock,’ who is in the habit of making continual threats against the settlers in this neighborhood, and who had also murdered several Indians lately. He has conducted himself lately in so outrageous a manner, that Mr. Winslow Anderson has considered himself in personal danger, and on that account has left his place, and come to reside at the falls of the Wallamette; and were I in circumstances that I could possibly remove from my place, I would certainly remove also, but am so situated that it is not possible for me to do so. I beg, therefore, that you, sir, will take into consideration the propriety of ridding the country of a villain, against the depredations of whom none can be safe, as it is impossible to guard against the lurking attacks of the midnight murderer. I have therefore taken the liberty of informing you that I shall be in expectation of a decided answer from you on or before the 10th of March next; after that date, I shall consider myself justified in acting as I shall see fit, on any repetition of the threats made by the before-mentioned Indian or his party. I am, &c., with respect, James D. Saules.”

Cockstock had allegedly killed some members of another tribe who had considered acquiescing to some of the new rules imposed by White. A bounty was offered for the capture of Cockstock, and it led to his death. There was more than one version of the events, White describing him as a dangerous man going to a violent death, and another in which outsiders claimed he was coming peacefully to claim his innocence. The incident brought 70 armed members of Cockstock’s tribe looking for answers.

People were on edge.

In 1844, Saules was arrested when a neighbor, Charles Pickett, asserted that Saules had “threatened to incense the Indians against his property, to destroy the same; and that he...verily believes that unless measures are taken to prevent [Saules]...he will carry those threats into execution.”

Two witness backed up Pickett’s assertion.

“They claimed, ‘Indians had come in a menacing manner; and that Saul [sic] said he would stand for the Indians’ rights; and that [Saules] was armed and prepared to do so; and that the Indians would burn and destroy his house and property.’ The jury, also comprised of American immigrants, three of whom arrived via the Great Migration of 1843, found Saules guilty of all charges.”

According to Coleman, one juror was Pickett’s close friend and traveling companion. Four of the jurors were members of an organization led by Pickett. Saules was not given any legal representation, and these were not a jury of his peers. He wasn’t even allowed to be considered a citizen of the United States.

Pickett was a young southern man who had grown up on a fruit plantation. He was pro-slavery and an “outspoken white supremacist.” He was also involved in land speculation and once squatted on a 640 square plot claimed by the Methodists, going so far as to plant crops in order to establish his own claim. He must have meant business because that was a lot of work for a man once described as “a spunge and a loafer and above all a debaucher with Indian women…” by a Methodist missionary.

Pickett got the Methodists’ land and broke it up into lots which he sold before moving to California.

Meanwhile, Saules served time at Subagent White’s own home. Finally, Saules was told to leave the Willamette Valley and find work at the Methodist mission at Clatsop Plains.

White later spoke of Saules in a letter to the U.S. Secretary at War, stating that he “remains in that vicinity with his Indian wife and family, conducting, as yet, in a quiet manner…” but with an about face said that Saules “should be transported, together with every other Negro, being in our condition dangerous subjects. Until we have some further means of protection, their immigration ought to be prohibited.”

Saules returned to his cabin overlooking Baker Bay and worked for the Methodist missionaries while Oregon’s provisional government instituted the “Lash Law,” which banned immigration of free black people to the region. If they dared appear and did not leave in a set amount of time, they would be flogged. And flogged again if necessary.

Two years later, Saules would have to move again over a land claim issue.

Saules was well known for failing to pilot the U.S.S Shark over the Columbia Bar. He had been willing to help when the captain was unable to locate a trained pilot to assist. Twenty minutes later, Saules had run the ship aground on Chinook shoal. The ship did not sustain any damage and later broke free. However, when it was time to return to the open sea, the captain attempted the passage himself and struck a bar. He got his entire crew to shore, but the ship was wrecked.

Saules worked aboard the Calapooia, a 35-ton schooner that carried freight and people throughout the region.

In 1846, Saules made the Oregon Spectator.

“A negro man named James D. Saul was brought to [Oregon City] recently from the mouth of the river, charged with having caused the death of his wife, an Indian woman. He was examined before Justice Hood, the result of which examination we have never been able to ascertain, but the accused is at large and likely to remain so, we suppose.”

Coleman wondered if there was a lack of evidence, or if it went away because the life of a native woman held so little value.

By 1848, Saules was commanding the Calapooia. One passenger later wrote that it was “a queer kind of craft...built like a scow and rigged as a schooner.” The passenger described Saules as an odd character who felt the dignity of this position of so fine a craft” and that he was “good natured, however, and we got along very well.”

Another writer claimed that Saules later survived the sinking of the Calapooia near Astoria.

In 1850, Saules’ land on Cape Disappointment was given to the man who had acted as his judge in the Willamette Valley, Elijah White.

Saules doesn’t show up again except in the 1851 ledgers of the Cathlamet general store. He is believed to have died sometime in the 1850s, possibly in a boating accident in 1851, when angry citizens attempted to apprehend three black men who were selling alcohol to Native Americans. The boat capsized and one man drowned, possibly Saules.

During his lifetime, he entertained his friends and neighbors with his fiddle playing.

One writer was impressed with the man. “From his association with culture people [Saules] had acquire considerable knowledge of things in general and could sustain a very interesting conversation on a variety of subjects,” he wrote.

According to Coleman, the 2007 Oregon Boating Guide, published by the Oregon State Marine Board, states that Jim Crow Point near Cathlamet was named for James Saules.

“If this is true, Coleman wrote, “Saules may have lived there toward the end of his life.”