after all this roaming over the plain at Bobby's heels, but I happened
to take the right course. When the trail was found, there was the saddle
to look for, and this was located with some difficulty.
The sun was high when we started on our journey. A few hundred yards of
travel brought uneasiness, as it was evident that we were not on the
regular trail. Not knowing but this was some cut-off, I went on until
the Columbia River bluff was reached and the great river was in sight,
half a mile distant and several hundred feet lower. Taking a trail down
the bluff that seemed more promising than the wagon tracks, I began to
search for the road at the foot of the bluff, only to find every
semblance of a road gone. I lost more than a half-day's precious time,
and again was thrown into anxiety lest I had missed the long-sought
train.
The next incident that I remember vividly was my attempt to cross the
Columbia, just below the mouth of the Snake River. I had seen but few
Indians on the whole trip and, in fact, the camp I found there on the
bank of the great river was the first I distinctly remember coming upon.
I could not induce the Indians to cross me over; they seemed surly and
unfriendly. Their behavior was so in contrast to that of the Indians on
the Sound that I could not help wondering what it meant. No one, to my
knowledge, lost his life at the hands of the Indians that season, but
the next summer all or nearly all the travelers who ventured into that
country unprotected were murdered.
That night I camped late, opposite Wallula (old Fort Walla Walla), in a
sand storm of great fury. I tethered my pony this time, and rolled
myself up in the blanket, only to find myself fairly buried in the
drifting sand in the morning. It required a great effort to creep out of
the blanket, and an even greater effort to free the blanket from the
accumulated sand. By this time the wind had gone down and comparative
calm prevailed.
[Illustration: I spent two hours calling across the river at the top of
my voice.]
Then came the attempt to make myself heard across the wide river by the
people of the fort. I traveled up and down the river bank for half a
mile or so, in the hope of catching a favorable breeze to carry my voice
to the fort, yet all to no avail. I sat upon the bank hopelessly
discouraged, not knowing what to do. I must have been two hours
hallooing at the top of my voice, until I was hoarse from the violent
effort.
Finally, while sitting there wondering what to do, I spied a blue smoke
arising from a cabin on the other side. Soon after I saw a man; he
immediately responded to my renewed efforts to attract attention. The
trouble had been that the people were all asleep, while I was there in
the early morning expending my breath for nothing.
The man was Shirley Ensign, of Olympia, who had established a ferry
across the Columbia River and had lingered to set over belated
immigrants, if any should come along. He came across the river and gave
me glad tidings. He had been out on the trail fifty miles or more and
had met my people. They were camped some thirty miles away, he thought,
and they would reach the ferry on the following day.
But I could not wait there for them. Procuring a fresh horse, I started
out in a cheerful mood, determined to reach camp that night if I could
possibly do so. Sundown came, and there were no signs of camp. Dusk came
on, and still no signs. Then I spied some cattle grazing on the upland,
and soon came upon the camp in a ravine that had shut it from view.
Rejoicing and outbursts of grief followed. I inquired for my mother the
first thing. She was not there. Months before she had been buried in the
sands of the Platte valley. My younger brother also lay buried on the
Plains, near Independence Rock. The scene that followed is of too sacred
memory to write about.
When we came to consider how the party should proceed, I advised the
over-mountain trip. But I cautioned them to expect some snow and much
hard work.
"How long will it take?" they asked.
"About three weeks."
This brought disappointment; they had thought they were about through
with the journey.
"You came to stay with us, didn't you?"
"I want to; but what about my wife and the two babies, at the island?"
Father said some one must go and look after them. So Oliver was sent
ahead, while I was to take his place and help the immigrants through the
Natchess Pass.
In our train were fifty or more head of stock, seven wagons, and
seventeen people. We made the trip across the divide in twenty-two days
without serious mishap or loss. This was good time, considering the
difficulties that beset our way at every step. Every man literally "put
his shoulder to the wheel." We were compelled often to take hold of the
wheels to boost the wagons over the logs or to ease them down steep
places. Our force was divided into three groups,--one man to each wagon
to drive; four to act as wheelmen; father and the women, on foot or
horseback, to drive the stock. God bless the women folks of the Plains!
Nobler, braver, more uncomplaining souls were never known. I have often
thought that some one ought to write a just tribute to their valor and
patience, a book of their heroic deeds.
One day we encountered a newly fallen tree, cocked up on its own
upturned roots, four feet from the ground. Go around it we could not; to
cut it out with our dulled, flimsy saw seemed an endless task.
"Dig down, boys," said father, and in short order every available shovel
was out of the wagons. Very soon the way was open fully four feet deep,
and oxen and wagons passed under the obstruction.
Do you say that we endured great hardships? That depends upon the point
of view. As to this return trip, I can truly say for myself that it was
not one of hardship. I enjoyed overcoming the difficulties, and so did
the greater number of the company. Many of them, it is true, were
weakened by the long trip across the Plains; but better food was
obtainable, and the goal was near at hand. It was a positive pleasure,
therefore, to pass over the miles, one by one, assured that final
success was a matter of only a very short time.
When our little train at last emerged from the forests and came out
into the Nisqually plains, it was almost as if we had come into a
noonday sun from a dungeon, so marked was the contrast. Hundreds of
cattle, sheep, and horses were quietly grazing, scattered over the
landscape as far as one could see. The spirits of the tired party rose
as they looked upon this scene, indicating a contentment and prosperity
in which they might participate if they so desired.
Our cabin, eighteen feet square, could not hold all the visitors.
However, it was an easy matter to set up the three tents they had
brought with them, and for several days we held a true reunion. Great
was the feasting, with clam bakes, huckleberry pies and puddings,
venison for meat, and fresh vegetables from our garden, at which the
newcomers could not cease from marveling. The row of sweet peas that my
wife had planted near the cabin helped to put heart into those
travel-weary pioneers; where flowers could be planted, a home could be
made.
For a short time the little party halted to take breath and to look over
the new country. This rest, however, could not last long. Preparations
must be made without delay for shelter from the coming storms of winter;
the stock must be cared for, and other beginnings made for a new life of
independence.
After surveying the situation, father said the island home would not do.
He had come two thousand miles to live neighbors; I must give up my
claim and take up another near his, on the mainland. Abandoning the
results of more than a year's hard work, I acted upon his request, and
across the bay we built our third cabin.
[Illustration: The night ride to the fort.]
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
INDIAN WAR DAYS
ONE of the saddest chapters in the early history of Washington Territory
was the trouble with the Indians, which led finally to open war.
On October 28, 1855, word came that all the settlers living on White
River had been killed by the Indians and that the next day those in the
Puyallup valley would be massacred. At the risk of his life a friendly
Indian brought this news to us in the dead hours of the night.
The massacre had occurred less than twenty miles from where we lived.
For all we knew the Indians might be on us at any moment. There were
three men of us, and each had a gun.
The first thing we did was to harness and hitch the team to the wagon.
Then we opened the gates to let the calves get to their mothers, turned
the pigs loose, and opened the chicken-house door--all this without
light. Then the drive for our lives began, the women and babies lying
close to the bottom of the wagon, the men with guns ready for action.
We reached Fort Steilacoom unmolested. But we could not in safety stop
there. The place was really no fort at all, only an encampment, and it
was already filled with refugees from the surrounding settlements. So we
pushed on into the town and stayed there until a blockhouse was built.
This building was about fifty feet wide and nearly a hundred feet long.
It was bullet-proof, without windows, and two stories high. A heavy door
swung at the front entrance to the lower story, while an inclined walk
from higher ground in the rear enabled us to reach the upper story;
inside, a ladder served the purpose of a stairway between the two
stories.
The blockhouse proved a haven of safety during the Indian trouble, not
only to our own family but to many of our neighbors besides.
Seventy-five such houses were built during these troublous times.
Numbers of settlers did not go back to their homes for several years.
The Indians finally came in force just across the Sound and defied the
troops. They also prevented the soldiers from landing from the steamer
sent against them. A few days later we heard the guns from Fort
Nisqually, which, however, I have always thought was a false alarm. It
was when a captive child was brought in that we began to feel the
gravity of the situation.
Yet many of our fears turned out to be baseless. For instance, one day
Johnny Boatman, a little boy not quite four years old, was lost. His
mother was almost crazed, for word went out that the Indians had stolen
him. A day later the lad was found under a tree, asleep. He had simply
wandered away.
A perplexing feature of the whole affair came from the fact that there
were two warring camps among the forces of both the Indians and the
whites. Some of the Indians were friendly; we had ample proof of that
fact. Some of the whites were against the harsh measures taken by those
in charge. This dissension led to much unnecessary trouble and
bloodshed.
[Illustration: The blockhouse, a haven of safety.]
The war was brought on by the fact that the Indians had been wronged.
This seems certain. They had been robbed of their lands, by the treaties
made in 1854, and there had been atrocious murders of Indians by
irresponsible white men. The result was suffering and trouble for all of
us.
The war brought troops, many of whom were reckless men; the army then
was not up to the standard of today. Besides, there came in the wake of
the soldiers a trail of gamblers and other disreputable people to vex
and perplex us. In the blockhouses could be seen bullet marks which we
knew did not come from Indians.
I remember a little drummer boy, known as Scotty, who used frequently to
come over to our home. He was a bright little fellow, and the Colonel,
finding it was agreeable to us, encouraged him to make these visits,
perhaps to get him away a little from the rough life of the post. Scotty
had been living with a soldier there who, as report had it, used to get
drunk and beat his wife. When my wife asked Scotty one day if the
soldier abused his wife, he replied, "Well, I can't say exactly that he
abuses her. He only cuffs and kicks her around the house sometimes."
Poor boy! he had seen so much rough living that he didn't know what
abuse meant.
Not all the soldiers were of this drunken cast, of course. Many brave
and noble men were among the military forces. The Indians, naturally,
did not discriminate between good and bad soldiers. They hated and
fought the troops, while at the same time they would often protect the
pioneers, with whom they had been generally friendly.
I had lived in peace with these Indians and they had gained my
confidence. As events subsequently showed, I held their friendship and
confidence. At one time, during the war, a party of Indians held me
harmless within their power. They had said they would not harm those who
had advocated their cause at the time the treaties were made.
[Illustration: The lost child.]
Soon after the outbreak noted, I disregarded the earnest entreaties of
many persons and went back to my stock and to the cabin to care for the
abandoned dairy and young cattle.
I did not believe the Indians would molest me, but took the precaution
of having my rifle in a convenient place. I did not need to use it. When
nightfall came I did withdraw from my cabin, not from fear of war
parties, but of individual outlaws.
The sole military experience of my life consisted in an expedition to
the Puyallup valley with a company of seventeen settlers soon after the
outbreak described. The settlers of Puyallup had left their homes the
day after the massacre in such haste that they were almost destitute of
clothing, bedding, and food, as well as shelter. A strong military force
had penetrated the Indian country--the upper Puyallup valley and beyond.
We knew of this, but did not know that the soldiers had retreated by
another road, virtually driven out, the very day we went in armed with
all sorts of guns and with scarcely any organization.
We had gone into the Indian stronghold not to fight Indians, but to
recover property. Nevertheless, there would have been hot work if we had
been attacked. The settlers knew the country as well as did the Indians
and were prepared to meet them on their own ground and in their own way.
The Indians were in great force but a few miles distant. They had scouts
on our tracks, but did not molest us. We visited every settler's cabin
and secured the belongings not destroyed. On the sixth day we came away
with great loads of "plunder." All the while we were in blissful
ignorance that the troops had been withdrawn, and that no protection lay
between us and the Indian forces.
After this outbreak, Indians and settlers about our neighborhood lived
in peace, on the whole. To anyone who treated them fairly, the Indians
became loyal friends.
Mowich Man, an Indian whom I was to know during many years, was one of
our neighbors. He frequently passed our cabin with his canoe and
people. He was a great hunter, a crack shot, and an all-round Indian of
good parts. Many is the saddle of venison that he brought me in the
course of years. Other pioneers likewise had special friends among the
Indians.
Some of Mowich Man's people were fine singers. His camp, or his canoe if
he was traveling, was always the center for song and merriment. It is a
curious fact that one seldom can get the Indian music by asking for it,
but rather must wait for its spontaneous outburst. Indian songs in those
days came from nearly every nook and corner and seemed to pervade the
whole country. We often could hear the songs and accompanying stroke of
the paddle long before we saw the floating canoes.
[Illustration: Carrying a dairy to the new mining town.]
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE STAMPEDE FOR THE GOLD DIGGINGS
HARDLY had we got fairly over the Indian War when another wave of
excitement broke up our pioneer plans again. On March 21, 1858, the
schooner _Wild Pigeon_ arrived at Steilacoom with the news that the
Indians had discovered gold on Fraser River, that they had traded
several pounds of the precious metal with the Hudson's Bay Company, and
that three hundred people had left Victoria and its vicinity for the new
land of El Dorado. Furthermore, the report ran, the mines were
exceedingly rich.
The wave of excitement that went through the little settlement upon the
receipt of this news was repeated in every town and hamlet of the whole
Pacific Coast. It continued even around the world, summoning adventurous
spirits from all civilized countries of the earth.
Everybody, women folk and all, wanted to go, and would have started pell
mell had there not been that restraining influence of the second
thought, especially powerful with people who had just gone through the
mill of adversity. My family was still in the blockhouse that we had
built in the town of Steilacoom during the Indian War. Our cattle were
peacefully grazing on the plains a few miles away.
One of the local merchants, Samuel McCaw, bundled up a few goods, made a
flying trip up Fraser River, and came back with fifty ounces of gold
dust and the news that the mines were all that had been reported and
more, too. This of course, added fuel to the flame. We all believed a
new era had dawned upon us, similar to that of ten years before in
California, which changed the world's history. High hopes were built,
most of them to end in disappointment.
Not but that there were extensive mines, and that they were rich, and
that they were easily worked; how to get to them was the puzzling
question. The early voyagers had slipped up the Fraser before the
freshets came down from the melting snows to swell the torrents of that
river. Those going later either failed altogether and gave up the
unequal contest, or lost an average of one canoe or boat out of three in
the persistent attempt. How many lives were lost never will be known.
Contingents began to arrive in Steilacoom from Oregon, from California,
and finally from "the States." Steamers great and small began to appear,
with little cargo but with passenger lists that were said to be nothing
compared to those of ships coming in less than a hundred miles to the
north of us. These people landing in Whatcom in such great numbers must
be fed, we agreed. If the multitude would not come to us to drink the
milk of our cows and eat their butter, what better could we do than to
take our cows to the place where we were told the multitude did not
hesitate to pay a dollar a gallon for milk and any price one might ask
for fresh butter!
But how to get even to Whatcom was the rub. All space on the steamers
was taken from week to week for freight and passengers, and no room was
left for cattle. In fact, the run on provisions for the gold rush was so
great that at one time we were almost threatened with famine. Finally
our cattle, mostly cows, were loaded in an open scow and taken in tow
alongside the steamer, the _Sea Bird_, I think it was.
[Illustration: A "shaker" used to wash out gold.]
All went well enough until we arrived off the head of Whidby Island.
Here a choppy sea from a light wind began slopping over the scow and
evidently would sink us despite our utmost efforts at bailing. When the
captain would slow down the speed of his steamer, all was well; but the
moment greater power was applied, over the gunwales would come the
water.
The dialogue that ensued between the captain and me was more emphatic
than elegant. He dared not risk letting go of us, however, or of running
us under, for fear of incurring the risk of heavy damages. I would not
consent to be landed. So about the twentieth of June we were set adrift
in Bellingham Bay and, tired and sleepy, landed on the beach.
Our cows must have feed, they must be milked, the milk must be marketed.
There was no rest for us during another thirty-six hours. In fact, there
was but little sleep for anybody on that beach at the time. Several
ocean steamers had just dumped three thousand people on the beach, and
there was still a scramble to find a place to build a house or stretch
a tent, or even to spread a blanket, for there were great numbers
already there, landed by previous steamers. The staking of lots on the
tide flats at night, when the tide was out, seemed to be a staple
industry.
A few days after my arrival four steamers came with an aggregate of more
than two thousand passengers. Many of these, however, did not leave the
steamer; they took passage either to their port of departure--San
Francisco or Victoria--or to points on the Sound. The ebb tide had set
in, and although many steamers came later and landed passengers, their
return lists soon became large and the population began to diminish.
Taking my little dory that we had with us on the scow, I rowed to the
largest steamer lying at anchor. So many small boats surrounded the
steamer that I could not get within a hundred feet of it. All sorts of
craft filled the intervening space, from the smallest Indian canoe to
large barges, the owner of each craft striving to secure customers.
The great difficulty was to find a trail to the gold fields. This pass
and that pass was tried without success. I saw sixty men with heavy
packs on their backs start out in one company. Every one of these had to
come back after floundering in the mountains for weeks. The Indians,
among whom the spirit of war still smouldered, headed off some of the
parties. The snows kept back others; and finally the British, watching
their own interests, blocked the way through their land. As a result the
boom burst, and people resought their old homes.
It is doubtful if another stampede of such dimensions as that to the
Fraser in 1858 ever occurred where the suffering was so great, the
prizes so few, and the loss of life proportionately so great. Probably
not one in ten that made the effort reached the mines, and of those who
did the usual percentage drew the blanks inevitable in such stampedes.
And yet the mines were immensely rich; many millions of dollars of gold
came from the find in the lapse of years, and gold is still coming,
though now more than sixty years have passed.
While the losses of the people of the Puget Sound country were great,
nevertheless good came out of the great stampede in the large accession
of population that remained after the return tide was over. Many people
had become stranded and could not leave the country, but went to work
with a will to make a living there. Of these not a few are still honored
citizens of the state that has been carved out of the territory of that
day.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: Carrie sees "a big cat" sharpening its claws.]
CHAPTER TWENTY
MAKING A PERMANENT HOME IN THE WILDS
THE days that followed our venture in the gold field were more peaceful
and prosperous. Soon after the Indian War we had moved to a new claim.
We began now to realize to the full our dream of earlier days, to settle
on a farm and build a home.
Three neighbors were all we had, and the nearest lived nearly two miles
away. Two of them kept bachelor's hall. The thick, high timber made it
impossible for us to see any of our neighbors' houses. We could reach
only one by a road; to the others we might go by a trail. Under such
conditions we could not have a public school. This, however, did not
keep us from having a school of our own.
One day one of our farther-off neighbors, who lived more than four miles
away, came to visit us. Naturally the children flocked around him to
hear his stories in broad Scotch and to ply him with questions. In his
turn, he began to ask them questions. One of these was, "When do you
expect to go to school?"
"Oh, we have school now," responded the children. "We have school every
day."
"And pray, who is your teacher, and where is your schoolhouse?"
"Father teaches us at home every morning before breakfast. He hears the
lessons then, and mother helps us too."
"Your father told me a while ago that you had your breakfast at six
o'clock. What time do you get up?"
"Why, father sets the clock for half-past four, and that gives us an
hour while mother gets breakfast, you know."
Boys and girls of today may pity those poor pioneer children who had to
get up so early. They may as well dismiss such feelings from their
hearts. The children were cheerful and healthy; they did some work
during the day in addition to studying their lessons; and besides they
went to bed earlier than some boys and girls do these days.
In January 1861 the wreck of the steamer _Northerner_ brought great
sorrow to us, for my brother Oliver was among those lost. The ship
struck on an uncharted rock.