Daniel Franklin "D.F." Howard was born in 1841. He served in the Union Army of the Potomac during the Civil War. After the war, he settled in Washington State. There, he wrote under the pseudonym "Poet of the Cascades." He died in 1937 in Stella, Washington.

The Konapee wreck refers to a European shipwreck that may have occurred at Point Adams on the Columbia River during the 18th century. In 1811, Pacific Fur Company clerk Gabriel Franchere claimed that when he was voyaging on the lower Columbia, his guide claimed to be the son of a Spaniard who had survived a shipwreck. Several stories told by Clatsop and Chinook peoples in the late 19th century also concern a shipwreck, and anthropologists have theorized that these stories and Franchere's account all concern a single shipwreck. As of 2019, however, no archaeological evidence of such a wreck has been located. In the 1920s, D. F. Howard of Stella, Washington, wrote a poem, a historical novel, and a dramatic outline centered around the Konapee wreck based on histories and legends he had researched.