Jane Barnes was old Oregon’s first adventuress

EDITOR'S NOTE: This story started in one of the participating news publications that run the weekly Offbeat Oregon History newspaper column. If you have found your way here in some other way, the article might not make much sense, as the first 600 or so words will be missing!

In any case, it didn’t last long, because while McTavish and Henry were being rowed back to the Isaac Todd from Fort George on May 22, the boat was swamped and both of them drowned.

As a result, Jane was considered a widow by the local Chinook Indians, several of whom promptly proposed marriage. In particular, Prince Cassakas, son of Concomly, presented himself in full state ceremony to propose a marriage with her.

When Jane rejected Prince Cassakas’ proposal, it caused a diplomatic rift between the tribe and Fort George. The only way to fix it was to get her out of there, as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, she was stuck until the Isaac Todd could get under way, and because of various delays that didn’t happen until September. So for four months, Jane Barnes was stuck at the fort, unable to leave its walls by herself for fear Cassakas’ people would abduct her.

During that time, though, Jane seems to have had a good time. For diplomatic reasons, she had to remain single — anyone she might give her heart to after rejecting that of the Chinook prince would be in serious peril, as would the whole fort, as the tribe would consider it a further insult. Historian Porter suspects the ship’s doctor, Richard Swan, constituted himself as her secret cavalier; he accompanied her to most of the social events at which a girl couldn’t go stag. But, no one knows.

During the time she was stuck in the fort, she entertained herself as best she could. At one point she tried to establish a literary salon, but although she was clearly nobody’s fool, Jane didn’t have the education to hold up her end of a conversation with English gentlemen. Ross Cox tells of an incident in which she was chatting up a company clerk and made what she thought was a Shakespeare reference, that everyone present recognized as a quote from Alexander Pope. Doubtless that was the end of that idea!

Finally, the day came when the Isaac Todd set sail for Canton, and stood out over the bar westward bound. We can only imagine with what relief, surely not unmixed with regret, the Company employees at Fort George watched her go.

AT CANTON, JANE once again landed butter-side-up. There she met, and fell in love with, an English gentleman working for the East India Company.

This gentleman — who none of my sources mention by name — “offered her a splendid establishment,” as Cox puts it. Naturally, she accepted, and Cox writes in 1832 (by which time Jane would have been nearly 40 years old), “the last account I heard of her stated that she was then enjoying all the luxuries of Eastern magnificence.”

But, you know how rumors are — another account says Jane was back in England by 1916, trying to claim a small annuity promised her by Donald McTavish.

In any case, that’s the point at which the record goes silent. Either Jane Barnes found her “forever home” with a man she met in a waterfront Canton bar, or she finished her run battling for a small annuity with a company of tight-fisted Scots who likely blamed her for a good share of the trouble they ran into at Fort George.

For what it’s worth, I think it’s more likely Jane found a congenial mate and disappeared into respectable obscurity in the then-approved manner. Had she remained single, she surely would have made more news; and the men of the late Georgian period cannot have been so unromantic and stodgy as not to find the Jane Barnes style of adventuresome spirit irresistible.

But as with almost all stories of “misbehaving” women in the 1800s, we’ll never really know.

(Sources: “Jane Barnes, First White Woman in Oregon,” an article by Kenneth W. Porter published in the June 1930 issue of Oregon Historical Quarterly; Adventures on the Columbia River, a book by Ross Cox published in 1832 by J. Harper; “Fort George,” an article by William L. Lang published Aug. 30, 2022, on the Oregon Encyclopedia website)

Finn J.D. John teaches at Oregon State University and writes about odd tidbits of Oregon history. His most recent book, Bad Ideas and Horrible People of Old Oregon, published by Ouragan House early this year. To contact him or suggest a topic: finn@offbeatoregon.com or 541-357-2222.