John Jeffrey
Tthis is a section of a Larry Hunter mural in downtown Summerland, which shows the Brigades passing Okanagan Lake.
My book, The HBC Brigades: Culture, Conflict, and Perilous Journeys of the Fur Trade, was published by Ronsdale Press in July 2024. You may order the book through your local bookstore, or via Amazon. For America booksellers, the distributor for Ronsdale Press in the United States is Independent Publishers Group. Thank you!
So, who was John Jeffrey anyway?
John Jeffrey was a Scottish botanist who came to the west side of the Rocky Mountains in 1851. In early 1850 he had been sent from Scotland by a group of interested botanists from the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh, employed to locate items that earlier botanists such as David Douglas might have missed. He sailed in the HBC ship Prince of Wales, to York Factory, arriving there in August 1850. He left York Factory in September, in the company of John Lee Lewes, who was headed for Cumberland House. John Jeffrey spent part of the winter at Cumberland House, alongside Robert Clouston, and both men continued their journey to Edmonton House in late winter or early spring. It seems they travelled by dog sledge and not by boat or canoe (of course). Jeffrey said, “I continued to trudge on from post to post, getting a fresh man and fresh dogs at every post that I came [to] enroute. I generally remained at each station for a few days to refresh for another stage. The route lay along the Saskatchewan River to Edmonton House.”
Clouston and John Jeffrey left Edmonton House in March, 1851, travelling in the winter express to Jasper’s House, where they would both meet the outgoing York Factory Express. John Jeffrey wrote that “we steered in a northwest course through the woods, and fell on the Athabasca River at Fort Assiniboine, travelled by the course of that river all the way to Jasper House, at which place we arrived on the 21st of March. All the distance I walked on snow shoes the snow being on average 2 feet deep.” They arrived at Jasper’s House on the 21st of March, still travelling by dog sledge.
At this point we read Robert Clouston’s journal, and discover what happened on their shared journey across the mountains. Clouston was a rough and ready HBC man who had a lot to say, and said it all. Before he left Edmonton House, he had told his father-in-law Donald Ross, of Norway House, that “It is now settled that Mr. Jeffery and I will start on the 8th [March]; I have nothing new to say further, than to ask you to give my love and best wishes…”
The two men reached Jasper’s House on March 21, and remained there until April 26. They left Jasper’s House on their way to meet the outgoing York Factory Express on its way to Edmonton House: they would return with the guides to Boat Encampment and Fort Colvile. Clearly, John Jeffrey and Robert Clouston were travelling with the horse guard, who was bringing horses west to pick up the men on the incoming Express and bring them to Jasper’s House. On their third day on horseback they reached what he called Moose Encampment, “where the river winds through a level plain with little lakes on either side and stupendous mountains all around.” According to Clouston, when he and Jeffreys met the express men, they prepared to “exchange our horses for their snowshoes. We met them early in the morning, and I must say that I tied my snowshoes with a very bad grace,” Clouston reported.
Clouston complained that the First Nations men, who were their guides across the mountains, asked an exorbitant price for carrying their guns and personal possessions, and “Jeffrey & myself each shouldered a bundle.” They ascended the hill to Athabasca Pass and crossed over the lakes, and then grumbled their way down the Big Hill on the other side (or at least Clouston grumbled). On reaching Boat Encampment, they met the Iroquois men who would carry them downriver, but apparently got little sympathy from them.
The two men reached Fort Colvile on May 13, 1851. At this time, Alexander Caulfield Anderson was in charge of the place. Clouston was given a guide and continued his way overland to Fort Vancouver, while John Jeffrey spent the spring at Fort Colvile and then rode overland to Fort Victoria with the outgoing Fort Colvile Brigades. This is what James Robert Anderson, son of Alexander Caulfield Anderson, had to say of Jeffrey’s stay at Fort Victoria.
Few living people possibly remember having met Jeffrey, the naturalist, after whom several native plants are named. Mr. Jeffrey reached Fort Victoria in 1850 or 1851 [1851 is correct], having come through Fort Colvile where my father was stationed, and I was therefore the chosen companion of Mr. Jeffrey in his near-by excursions. A woodpecker slain by Mr. Jeffrey on the edge of the wood where the city nursery now is, remains impressed on my memory. I never heard anything further of Mr. Jeffrey after his departure until 1911, when visiting the Royal Botanical Gardens in Edinburgh. In conversing with the Director, Professor Balfour, F.R.S., the name of Mr. Jeffrey came up, and I was then informed by Mr. Balfour that after leaving Fort Victoria he found his way to San Francisco, then in the throes of the gold excitement, and was never heard of afterwards, probably murdered by the lawless ruffians who congregate [at] all mining centres. Naturally, Professor Balfour was greatly interested in meeting someone who actually had seen Mr. Jeffrey. After I had penned the foregoing I came across a foot-note by my late Father in his Prize Essay, 1872, regarding Mr. Jeffrey, as follows:
“The late Mr. Jeffrey, a botanist, who visited the country under the auspices of the Hudson’s Bay Company, employed by the Duke of Buccleuch and other gentlemen, to make collections… Poor Jeffrey, it may be added, after wandering sometimes in company with the writer, through a considerable portion of British Columbia, and braving all its fabulous dangers, met his fate in New Mexico in 1852. He was murdered by a Spanish outcast, for his mules and his scanty travelling appointments.” [James Anderson’s Memoirs, pp. 183-184].
It appears that John Jeffrey visited Kamloops, but probably not with A.C. Anderson. But the “considerable portion of British Columbia”that Anderson spoke of, would have been the Brigade Trail from Fort Colvile, including the Kettle River valley, Rock Creek, Osoyoos Lake, Similkameen Valley, the passage over the Tulameen Plateau to Fort Hope, and the downriver voyage to Fort Langley. That’s a considerable journey, and almost the entire width of the province!
John Jeffrey spent the winter of 1851-52 at Fort Victoria. He visited Fort Nisqually where he met William Fraser Tolmie [another botanist], and where he also spent some time collecting around the fort and in Puget Sound. Jeffrey arrived at Fort Vancouver, where John Ballenden was the Chief Factor in charge of the place, in the absence of Peter Skene Ogden who was on furlough. He left Fort Vancouver on June 20, 1852, and travelled by land to California, via the Willamette Valley and the Umpqua Country. He sent back specimens from the Willamette Valley and the Cascade Range, the Shasta Valley and Mount Shasta, in northern California. Then he returned to Fort Vancouver in October 1852, and remained there until April 1853.
John Jeffrey’s final trip south led him to Northern California via the Umpqua Valley and the Rogue River Valley. In August 1853 he was collecting in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and later in August in the Sacramento River Valley. He was still collecting in early October, when he arrived in San Francisco. He was still collecting on the shores of San Francisco Bay in November of that year. He was apparently in San Francisco all the way up to January 1854. Then he apparently joined an expedition to Fort Yuma, so he could explore the Gila and Colorados Rivers — and he disappeared.
There are many rumours about John Jeffrey’s death, but no clear indication of how he actually died. The stories run from “he perished of thirst in the desert;” to “killed by Indians he was trading with;” to “murdered by lawless ruffians” of the gold rush; or “murdered by a Spanish outcast” in New Mexico. No one has the answer as far as I know.
Copyright, Nancy Marguerite Anderson, 2024. All rights reserved.