Frontiersman, Businessman, Politician and Founder of Glencoe
By Winnifred Herrschaft, WCHS Research Assistant
Glencoe founder Charles Richard McKay epitomized diversity before the term became popularized. “Charley,” as his many friends called him, was proud of his Scottish heritage yet equally honored his mother’s Cree Metisse background. Ever the entrepreneur, McKay was a gold miner, cattleman, real estate investor and harness-maker at various times in his work life as well as a politician.
Canadian Years
Charles McKay was fond of telling people he was born at sea in 1808 while his family was en route from Scotland to Canada. However, official records of the Hudson’s Bay Company show he was born at Brandon House on the Assiniboine River in what is now the province of Manitoba (1)Mary Elliott Caire: Chart of McKay-Elliott family, Biographies of various McKay-Elliot family members & related materials: MSS 702; Washington County Museum, p.C9).
The Hudson’s Bay Company employed both his father, John McKay, and his uncle, “Mad” Donald McKay. His mother was Mary Favel whose father had been an English trader and whose mother was a Cree Metisse. (In Canada, the Metis were the children of European or Canadian fathers and native American mothers. Metisse is the feminine form of the word.) Mary died when Charles was 2 years old and his father’s death soon followed.
They left eight children whose care fell to the oldest brother, John Richards McKay. John had recently returned from completing his education in Scotland and was now employed by the Hudson’s Bay Company. Mary McKay’s two Metis brothers were also in the household and worked for the Hudson’s Bay Company.
Charles’ early education was pretty much in the hands of his brother. From John, he derived a knowledge of the classics and a deep appreciation for the lore and literature of Scotland, not the usual educational curriculum for a child on the frontier.
When he was 16 Charles was apprenticed to the harness-making trade. John was dismissed from the Hudson’s Bay Company. In 1824, Charley was a member of Sir George Simpson’s party that crossed the Rocky Mountains into Snake Country. This party, sent into territory claimed by both Canada and the U.S., was charged with trapping the area bare to create a buffer against the pressure of U.S. occupation (ibid, p.B-4). The party encountered Blackfeet but Charley, serving as interpreter, was able to negotiate with their leader, James Bird, Jr. Bird, Charley’s future brother- in-law, had been sent into the territory years before to learn the Blackfeet language.
At the end of the journey, Charley boarded a ship for Scotland, returning in 1827 to marry Letitia Byrd, daughter of the governor and former chief factor of the Hudson’s Bay Company. They lived on a small farm on the Byrd estate while Charles continued in the harness business.
On to Puget Sound and the Tualatin Plains
In 1841, the couple, their three children and 22 other families of Metis extraction set out with two-wheeled Red River carts, horses and cattle on a long journey to Nisqually on Puget Sound. Charley’s brother-in-law, James Sinclair, led the expedition organized by Gov. George Simpson. Its goal was to colonize the Puget Sound area and offset the growing pressure from American settlement, save the territory for Britain and establish the border with Canada at 54/40. At Fort Spokane, Mary gave birth to her fourth child and, after a 10-day delay, the party moved on to Fort Nisqually.
The colonization effort failed. The settlers felt that the English overseers, whom they considered arrogant and domineering, had betrayed them. After one year the Red River pioneers left for the Willamette Valley and Charles McKay took up a claim on the Tualatin Plains.
When he learned that the Americans were forming a government, Charley traveled to Champoeg. There he renounced his British allegiance and gave up his financial support from Britain. He cast his vote for an American Oregon. At an earlier meeting he joined a committee considering “measures for the civil and military protection of this colony.”(Dobbs, Caroline C., “Men of Champoeg,” 1932, Metropolitan Press, Portland, Oregon, p. 190).
At Champoeg, he was elected captain of militia. He was in charge of one of three planned companies of mounted riflemen. However, fearing that such a show of force might prove threatening to the Indians, the Legislative Committee abandoned the idea of the three companies, which ended Charley’s military career.
When members of the Cayuse tribe killed Marcus and Narcissa Whitman at their mission in eastern Washington, Charley marched with his good friend and noted Indian fighter Tom McKay and his group of French Canadian and Metis volunteers to punish the Indians. According to the McKay family, it was Charley who shot Five Crows, the chief of the Cayuse tribe, shattering his arm and causing him to fall from his horse. When McKay and Five Crows met many years later, Five Crows said, “You tried to kill me and I tried to kill you, but I am not mad at you.”( 4-Dobbs, ibid.,p 192). Five Crows frequently called on the McKay family and brought horses to trade.
In 1849, Charley followed several of his neighbors to the California gold mines. He did well but decided that the real money was in supplying the miners. On his return he traveled around the county purchasing cattle and selling them in Portland. The story is told that, on one occasion, Charley was hiking along the Columbia River with his lunch and cash in his bedroll. He stopped for a meal at a house on the road and, after eating, found that the cash was missing from the bedroll. Following a scattering of gold coins, Charley found a hog enjoying the last of the lunch that had been left in the bedroll.
Charley prospered in the cattle business and ultimately opened a butcher shop in Portland. He continued to wander, however, going up and down the Columbia River to trade and, in 1855, he took time to serve in the Yakima Indian War.
During the early pioneer period, the McKay home and its surroundings were something of a social center. Old Hudson’s Bay Company associates and new and old immigrants joined officers from the British armed sloop, Modeste, stationed on the Columbia River, as frequent guests at balls held on the plains and festivities in the McKay home. Some of the social events brought harsh criticism from the religious community, which violently opposed the “Bacchanalian carousals.”
Birth of Glencoe
Over the years, Charley became well known for his activities in real estate though he was often forced to sell parcels of his own land to make ends meet. Some of his enterprises resulted in litigation. In 1871 he sold a half-acre of his claim to William Silvers, who was looking for a new site after his grist mill burned. Silvers found a “pretty little glen on McKay Creek where flowers bloom in profusion and shed sweet fragrance that is lost, where bees hum lazily, and where the clear waters of the stream ripple along.”(op.cit., Cairn, p. C-9).
Charley McKay named the place “Glencoe.” Though his Scottish roots were not in Glencoe, Scotland, Charley no doubt was well aware of the melancholy vale that saw the massacre of the McDonald clan by the Campbells in 1689. Having visited the site in his youth, he likely remembered the tragedy and paid tribute to those lost by naming this pretty little glen “Glencoe.”
The town grew rapidly and became a close community where intermarriage between the Metis and their neighbors was frequent and accepted. The social tone set earlier by the McKays continued. However, railway developers platted the rival town site of North Plains. By 1911, the new town was rapidly diverting new business from Glencoe. “Shed a tear for Glencoe, for Glencoe is no more.” (Caire, C-9) The victims of the Glencoe massacre whom Charley McKay may have memorialized are remembered with a cairn at the Old Scotch Church.
Charley McKay died in 1873. In his later years he had drifted into alcoholism, but he was fondly remembered in the press and extolled for his contributions to his adopted country. Many noted his success in breaking the stereotype of the Metis by proving himself a leader and one who was never vengeful against those who treated him and his family poorly.
“During thirty-two years in the Pacific Northwest, Charles McKay demonstrated that a half-blood from a different culture, environment, and political philosophy could successfully adapt to the American frontier. He showed leadership on the overland trail and during the struggle to establish farms at Nisqually. By refusing to be impeded by his racial or social peculiarity, Charles McKay shouldered a place in the new community without losing connection to the Indian side of his heritage.” (5) Jackson, John C. “Children of the Fur Trade,” Mountain Press Publishing Company. Missoula, Montana, 1995, p.194).
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