Primitive Aesthetics and Intimacy

One Calapooia settler, the Reverend Wilson Blain, noted at length both the aesthetic appeal of, and his emotional attachment to, the valley's primitive landscape during his early years of residence. Born in 1813 in Ross County, Ohio, Blain was living in Indiana in 1847 when the General Synod of the West of the Associated Reformed (Presbyterian) Church appointed him missionary to the Oregon settlement. Blain and his family migrated to Oregon, arriving in 1848. First they settled at Linn City, across the falls of the Willamette from Oregon City, where Blain edited the Oregon Spectator from October 1849 to September 1850. He also served on the first territorial legislature at this time.^[3]

After ministering to members of his church up and down the Willamette, including for the first time the Calapooia settlement on 18 June 1849, "and after carefully and prayerfully considering the whole subject," in 1850 Blain relocated his home to the juncture of foothill and prairie at "the western extremity of the Diamond Hills, and just where the valley of the Calapooya loses itself in the extended prairies of the Willamette." There he built a church—the first United Presbyterian church—an academy, and a small village he named Union Point. Blain glowingly wrote that his location "is in the midst of one of the most beautiful neighborhoods in the valley."^[4]

The primitive beauty of the Calapooia, as well as the whole of the southern Willamette Valley, greatly affected Blain. He devoted extensive passages in his letters to his developing relationship with this landscape. For instance, he wrote to a friend residing in Pennsylvania about a particularly memorable experience on the landscape he had in the winter of 1851. In noting that "all the circumstances surrounding . . . serve to lend a strange enchantment to the scene," Blain reveals that his experience was multisensual. In his letter he first leads his correspondent "to the summit of yonder green hill," for it is only from this eminent vantage that his own experience is possible to comprehend. To further help recreate the scene, Blain invokes imaginary olfactory and tactile sensations, urging his correspondent to "imagine now that you are breathing the air of the first week of February" and that "a soft balmy breeze [is] fanning your brow." Then, commanding his reader to "cast your eye abroad on the landscape," Blain commences to describe the vista imprinted in his own memory: "The prairies broad and smooth, in all directions and generally the south sides of the hills, are covered with a rich verdant sward of green and clover . The forest trees—the pine, fir, cedar, yew, laurel, etc., are all clothed with the foliage of perpetual verdure. With this fresh green world around, the deep azure of a cloudless sky above, . . . tell me is not this beautiful, glorious winter?" Once he has created a general panorama of splendor, Blain then defines specific textural features of the landscape:

Looking eastward, the eye rests on the western slope of the Cascades, penetrated at frequent intervals by sweet little valleys. To the westward and far to the north and south, lies the valley of the Willamette, interspersed with lines and clumps of timber. And in the distance beyond, reared aloft, are the undulating summits of the Coast Mountains. All around this scene of ver-

dure, and marking a brilliant and lofty line between earth and heaven, the snow rests on the mountain's brow.^[5]

In both the above letter and in one of 1851, the valley's buttes and foothills play a central role in Blain's intimate, even ecstatic, experience with the landscape of the Calapooia and southern Willamette valleys.^[6] In the second letter, Blain wrote that one day, "while out on pastoral duty," his way led him "over a smooth, grassy ridge, whose summit was, perhaps, some two hundred feet above the level of the Williamette prairies." On reaching the top of this rise, Blain "was permitted to contemplate a singularly beautiful combination of natural grandeur." He vividly described this startling vision. First he commented on his immediate surroundings: the "surface of the ground on which I stood was covered with a species of small yellow flowers." On the "higher slope of the mountain" above "waved a luxuriant growth of flowers of unsullied whiteness; above these the dark forest frowned; higher yet . . . the mountain's brow was wrapped in chilling snows."

Although he was taken with the scenery of the foothill on whose lower flank he perched, it was, significantly, "in the opposite direction," down to the valley, that Blain's vision was pulled, for there the true "beauty of the scene was exhibited." "Almost on a level with the point of which I stood hung a cloud, which formed a dark blue canopy over the entire country. It seemed like a vast awning stretched from the Cascades to the Coast Mountains." This "awning" provided a protected place under which, according to Blain, "the whole valley of the Willamette . . . reposed calmly in verdure and bloom. . . . On the upper surface of the cloud the sun shed its mild radiance. And around the further edge of the cloud the Coast Mountains reared their snowy crests, and glittering in the light of noon-day sun a waving margin of dazzling brilliance." What particularly struck Blain about this unique, "magnificent picture" was the ability of the southern Willamette landscape to afford a beautiful arrangement of a variety of seasons at one time, including stark opposites: "The warm sun and balmy breeze of summer, the verdure and bloom of spring, and the snows of winter."

Blain's letters reveal an intimate and complex connection with the primitive landscape of the Willamette. In the first he explained an experience of communion with the Calapooia and southern Willamette environment. Through multiple sensations—the "soft balmy breezes fanning" his brow, "breathing the air of the first week of February," and

viewing the great expanse of the open valley—Blain actually blended into and became part of the landscape. In the second letter Blain successively described "frowning forests," a valley that could "repose," flowers that "waved," and a mountain whose "brow" was wrapped in chilling snows. The physical landscape, through the prism of Blain's mind, took on animate qualities.

It is important to reiterate the key role of the valley's foothills in the bond Blain had with the landscape. Although the hills had a beauty of their own, they were not the focus of Blain's attention, for he continually describes the character of plains below him. In fact, at one point he notes specifically that "it was in the opposite direction," away from the foothills and toward the valley, "that the beauty of the scene was exhibited." However, it was only from the vantage of the foothills and buttes that these visions of the landscape and experiences with the local environment became possible for Blain. As the last chapter demonstrated, foothills played a key role in the physical reality of early settlement history of the southern Willamette Valley. The tension between foothills and plains also found its way into the settlers' psychological and emotional connection to landscape.

Granted, as a missionary settler of the Calapooia, Blain's tasks included encouraging others of his faith to go West and settle, and he undoubtedly wrote with that intention. But it is significant that he often chose the primitive over the pastoral landscape to inspire others to journey west. He also meant what he said. He had a strong attachment to the environment as it was. Once other settlers did begin to arrive, he felt equivocal about their encroachment on the landscape he so loved. He particularly questioned the exclusive attitudes he perceived them as harboring toward the environment. In his letters of 5 March and 1 April 1851, he commented that while his reports on the countryside resulted in only "feeble attempts to describe . . . [his] object of admiring observation," this world was "after all, not a paradise," for it "is truly a portion of the world of labor, sin and trouble." "Our attachment to Oregon," he wrote, "does not all arise from the charm of its scenery or its climate. With the people of this utilitarian age these things would have little influence. It is a country of vast resources, which are easily developed."^[7]

The primitive landscape held special meaning for Blain, and he wanted others to come West and settle it; however, he also felt uncertain about how they would relate to it and thus what the consequences for the landscape would be. In a way, Blain proved an important ob-

server of the settlement process, a process he viewed paradoxically. Although he proved correct in his assertion that the new residents of the Calapooia did harbor utilitarian designs on their new landscape, he nevertheless failed to gauge the depth of their appreciation for the same primitive landscape that he enjoyed. Though perhaps not as eloquently as Blain, they also expressed their admiration for the "charm of its scenery," as had the explorers and travelers who had preceded settlement. Thomas Kendall, for instance, remarked in an 1852 letter that "the plains on either side of the [the Calapooia River], presenting as handsome and good and pleasant locations as any country. . . . In the quality of their soil, in the grass with which they are covered, in the kamas with which they abound, and in their healthfulness, I venture to say, they are unsurpassed in almost any country." Even settler Benjamin Freeland, less proficient in written expression than his neighbors Blain and Kendall, could not help but appreciate the beauty of his primitive surroundings on the Calapooia when he wrote to his brother on arrival in early 1854:

We have a good piraier [prairie] Clame. I dont beleave it Can be beat in oregon or in any Other Country for production and for beauty the prere [prairie] or butts [buttes] and parts of the mountains are coverd over with grass as fine in quality and in goodness as your blew grass in the states . . . and the ballance of the Cuntry are Covered with timber as good as ainy timber . . . it are one of the hamsomest site in the World you can see the prairie all covered with green grass and look a round you and you can see the mountains all covered with green trees at all seasons of the year.

Other Calapooians felt similarly about the landscape. George Waggoner proclaimed the Calapooia "a beautiful place of gently rolling grassy lands, a great mountain peak above, and the broad beautiful valley in full view below." Another settler simply remarked in later years: "You can not imagine the beauty of this country when we first came here."^[8] Though perhaps neither as poetic nor emotionally expressive as Blain, who "gazed with rapture" on "many delightful scenes," Kendall, Freeland, Waggoner, and other early settlers of the Calapooia appreciated the primitive beauty of the land they came to settle.