begun a trading venture, in a small way. The venture having proved
successful, we invested all our savings in a new stock of merchandise,
and this stock, not all paid for, went down with the ship. Again we must
start in life, and we moved to a new location, a homestead in the
Puyallup valley. Here we lived and farmed for forty-one years, seeing
the town of Puyallup grow up on and around the homestead.
In the Puyallup valley there were more neighbors--two families to the
square mile. Yet no neighbors were in sight, because the timber and
underbrush were so thick we could scarcely see two rods from the edge of
our clearing. But the neighbors were near enough for us to provide a
public school and build a schoolhouse.
Some of the neighbors took their axes to cut the logs, some their oxen
to drag them, others their saws and cleaving tools to make clapboards
for the roof. Others again, more handy with tools, made the benches out
of split logs, or, as we called them, puncheons. With willing hands to
help, the schoolhouse soon received the finishing touches.
The side walls were scarcely high enough for the doorway, so one was cut
in the end. The door hung on wooden hinges, which squeaked a good deal
when the door was opened or shut; but the children did not mind that.
The roof answered well enough for the ceiling overhead, and a cut in one
of the logs on each side made two long, narrow windows for light. The
children sat with their faces to the walls, with long shelves in front
of them, while the smaller tots sat on low benches near the middle of
the room. When the weather would permit, the teacher left the door open
to admit more light. There was no need to let in more fresh air, as the
roof was quite open and the cracks between the logs let in plenty of it.
Sometimes we had a woman for teacher, and then the salary was smaller,
as she boarded around. That meant some discomfort for her during part of
the time, where the surroundings were not pleasant.
One day little Carrie, my daughter, started to go to school, but soon
came running back out of breath.
"Mamma! Mamma! I saw a great big cat sharpening his claws on a great big
tree, just the way pussy does!" she said as soon as she could catch her
breath.
Sure enough, upon examination, there were the marks of a cougar as high
up on the tree as I could reach. It must have been a big one to reach so
far up the tree. But the incident soon dropped out of mind and the
children went to school on the trail as if nothing had happened.
Afterwards I met a cougar on a lonely trail in the woods near where
Auburn now stands. I had been attempting to drive some wild cattle home,
but they were so unruly that they scattered through the timber and I was
obliged to go on without them late in the day. The forest was so dense
that it was hard to see the road even when the sun was shining; on a
cloudy day it seemed almost like night, though I could see well enough
to keep on the crooked trail.
Just before I got to Stuck River crossing I came to a turn in the trail
where it crossed the top of a big fir that had been turned up by the
roots and had fallen nearly parallel with the trail. The big roots held
the butt of the tree up from the ground. I think the tree was four feet
in diameter a hundred feet from the butt, and the whole body, from root
to top, was eighty-four steps long, or about two hundred and fifty feet.
I didn't stop to step it then. But you may be sure I took some pretty
long strides about that time; for just as I stepped over the fallen tree
near the top, I saw something move on the big body near the roots. The
thing was coming right towards me. In an instant I realized that it was
a great cougar. He was pretty, but he did not look especially pleasing
to me.
I didn't know what to do. I had no gun with me, and I knew perfectly
well there was no use to run. Was I scared, did you say? Did you ever
have creepers run up your back and right to the roots of your hair, and
nearly to the top of your head?
Did the cougar hurt me? If I had been hurt I shouldn't have been here to
tell you this story. The fun of it was that the cougar hadn't seen me
yet, but as soon as he did he scampered off as if the Old Harry himself
were after him, while I sped off down the trail as if old Beelzebub were
after me.
But no wild animals ever harmed us, and we did not die for want of
food, clothing, or shelter, although we did have some experiences that
were trying. Before the clearings were large we sometimes were pinched
for both food and clothing. I will not say we suffered much for either,
though I know that some families at times lived on potatoes, straight.
Usually fish could be had in abundance, and there was considerable
game--some bear and plenty of deer.
[Illustration: The Christmas tree with its homemade gifts.]
The clothing gave us more trouble, as but little money came to us for
the small quantity of produce we had to spare. I remember one winter
when we were at our wits' ends for shoes. We just could not get money to
buy shoes enough to go around, but we managed to get leather to make
each member of the family one pair. We killed a pig to get bristles for
the wax-ends, cut the pegs from alder log and seasoned them in the oven,
and made the lasts out of the same timber. Those shoes were clumsy, to
be sure; but they kept our feet dry and warm, and we felt thankful for
them and sorry for some neighbors' children, who had to go barefooted
even in quite cold weather. Carrie once had a pair of nice white shoes
"for best," I remember, that one of her brothers made for her, with
buckskin uppers and light tan-colored soles.
You must not think that we had no recreation and that we were a
sorrowful set. There was never a happier lot of people than these same
hard-working pioneers and their families. We had joy in our home life,
and amusements as well as labor.
Music was our greatest pleasure. We never tired of it. "Uncle John," as
every one called him, the old teacher, was constantly teaching the
children music; so it soon came about they could read their music as
readily as they could their school books.
No Christmas ever went by without a Christmas tree, at which the whole
neighborhood joined. The Fourth of July was never passed without a
celebration. We made the presents for the tree if we could not buy them,
and supplied the musicians, reader, and orator for the celebration.
Everybody had something to do and a voice in saying what should be done,
and that very fact made all happy.
[Illustration: _Brown Bros._
A dairy farm in Washington, where once the forest stood.]
It was sixteen miles to our market town, Steilacoom, over the roughest
kind of road. Nobody had horse teams at the start; we had to go with ox
teams. We could not make the trip out and back in one day, and we did
not have money to pay hotel bills. We managed in this way: we would
drive out part of the way and camp; the next morning we would drive into
town very early, do our trading, and if possible, drive back home the
same day. If not able to do this, we camped on the road again. But if
the night was not too dark we would reach home that night. And oh, what
an appetite we would have, and how bright the fire would be, and how
joyous the welcome in the cabin home!
The trees and stumps are all gone now and brick buildings and other good
houses occupy much of the land. As many people now live in that school
district as lived both east and west of the mountains when the Territory
was created in March of 1853. Instead of going in ox teams, or even
sleds, the people have carriages or automobiles; they can travel on any
of the eighteen passenger trains that pass daily through Puyallup, or on
street cars to Tacoma, and also on some of the twenty to twenty-four
freight trains, some of which are a third of a mile long. Such are some
of the changes wrought in fifty years since pioneer life began in the
Puyallup valley.
[Illustration: A hop field with the hops ready for picking.]
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
FINDING AND LOSING A FORTUNE
OUR youthful dream of becoming farmers was now realized in fullest
measure. The clearing was gradually enlarged, and abundant crops came to
reward our efforts. The comfort and plenty we had hoped and struggled
for was attained. Next came a development in the family fortunes that we
had not dreamed of. Never had we thought to see the Meeker family
conducting a business that would require a London office.
This unexpected prosperity came to us through the hop-growing industry,
upon which we entered with all our force. The business was well started
by the time of my father's death in 1869, and in the fifteen years
following the acreage planted to hops was increased until the crop-yield
of 1882, a yield of more than seventy-one tons, gave the Puyallup valley
the banner crop, as to quantity, of the United States--and, some
persons asserted, of the world.
The public, generally, gave me the credit of introducing hop culture
into the Northwest. Therefore it seems fitting to tell here the story of
the beginnings of an industry that came to have great importance.
In March of 1865, Charles Wood of Olympia sent about three pecks of hop
roots to Steilacoom for my father, Jacob R. Meeker, who then lived on
his claim in the Puyallup valley. John V. Meeker, my brother, passed by
my cabin when he carried the sack of roots on his back from Steilacoom
to my father's home, a distance of about twenty miles, and from the sack
I took roots enough to plant six hills of hops. As far as I know those
were the first hops planted in the Puyallup valley. My father planted
the remainder, and in the following September harvested the equivalent
of one bale of hops, 180 pounds. This was sold for eighty-five cents a
pound, or a little more than a hundred and fifty dollars for the bale.
This sum was more money than had been received by any of the settlers in
the Puyallup valley, except perhaps two, from the products of their
farms for that year. My father's near neighbors obtained a barrel of hop
roots from California the next year, and planted them the following
spring--four acres. I obtained what roots I could get that year, but not
enough to plant an acre. The following year (1867) I planted four acres,
and for twenty-six successive years thereafter we added to the area
planted, until our holdings reached past the five-hundred-acre mark and
our production was more than four hundred tons a year.
None of us knew anything about the hop business, and it was entirely by
accident that we engaged in it. But seeing that there were possibilities
of great gain, I took pains to study hop culture, and found that by
allowing our hops to mature thoroughly, curing them at a low
temperature, and baling them while hot, we could produce hops that would
compete with any product in the world. Others of my neighbors planted
them, and so did many people in Oregon, until soon there came to be a
field for purchasing and shipping hops. But the fluctuations in price
were so great that in a few years many growers became discouraged and
lost their holdings.
[Illustration: The site of the cabin home in Puyallup is now Pioneer
Park, Ezra Meeker's gift to the city that he founded. In it still stands
the ivy vine that for fifty years grew over the cabin.]
Finally, during the failure of the world's hop crop in the year 1882,
there came to be unheard-of prices for hops, and fully one third of the
crop of the Puyallup valley was sold for a dollar a pound. I had that
year nearly one hundred thousand pounds, which brought an average of
seventy cents a pound.
My first hop house was built in 1868--a log house. It still stands in
Pioneer Park in Puyallup. We frequently employed more than a thousand
people during harvest time. Many of these were Indians, some of whom
would come for a thousand miles down the coast from British Columbia
and even the confines of Alaska; they came in the great cedar-log canoes
manned with twenty paddlers or more. For the most part I managed my
Indian workers very easily. Once I had to tie up two of them to a tree
for getting drunk; their friends came and stole away the
prisoners--which was what I intended they should do.
It was in 1870, eighteen years after my arrival from across the Plains,
that I made my first return journey to the States. I had to go through
the mud to the Columbia River, then out over the bar to the Pacific
Ocean, and down to San Francisco. Then there was the seven days' journey
over the Central and Union Pacific and connecting lines; this meant
sitting bolt upright all the way, for there were no sleeping cars then,
and no diners either.
About 1882 I had come to realize that the important market for hops was
in England, and E. Meeker & Co. began sending trial shipments, first
seven bales, then the following year five hundred bales, then fifteen
hundred. Finally our annual shipments reached eleven thousand bales a
year, or the equivalent in value of half a million dollars--said at that
time to be the largest export hop business of any one concern in the
United States. At one time I had two full trainloads between the Pacific
and the Atlantic, on their way to London. I spent four winters in London
dealing in the hop market.
Little as I had thought ever to handle an international business, still
less had I thought ever to write a book. My first publication was an
eighty-page pamphlet descriptive of Washington Territory, printed in
1870. My first real book, _Hop Culture in the United States_, was
published in 1883. I mention this fact simply as one instance out of the
many that could be given of the unexpected lines of development that
life in the new land opened out to the pioneers.
The hop business could not be called a venture; it was simply a growth.
The conditions were favorable to us in that we could produce hops for
the world's market at the lowest prices. We actually pressed the English
growers so closely that more than fifteen thousand acres of hops were
destroyed in that country.
Our great prosperity was not to last. One evening in 1892, as I stepped
out of my office and cast my eyes toward one group of hop houses, it
struck me that the hop foliage of a field near by was off color--did not
look natural. One of my clerks from the office said the same thing--the
vines did not look natural. I walked down to the yards, a quarter of a
mile away, and there first saw the hop louse. The yard was literally
alive with lice, and they were destroying at least the quality of the
hops. I issued a hop circular, sending it to more than six hundred
correspondents all along the coast in California, Oregon, Washington,
and British Columbia, and before the week was out I began to receive
samples from them, and letters asking what was the matter with the hops.
It appeared that the attack of lice was simultaneous in Oregon,
Washington, and British Columbia, extending over a distance coastwise of
more than five hundred miles, and even inland up the Skagit River, where
there was an isolated yard. This plague was like a clap of thunder out
of a clear sky to us.
I sent my second son, Fred Meeker, to London to learn the English
methods of fighting the pest and to import some spraying machinery. We
found to our cost, however, in the course of time, that the English
methods did not suit our different conditions; for while we could kill
the lice, we had to use so much spraying material on the dense foliage
that, in killing them, we virtually destroyed the hops. Instead of being
able to sell our hops at the top price of the market, we saw our product
fall to the foot of the list. The last crop I raised cost me eleven
cents a pound and sold for three under the hammer at sheriff's sale.
At that time I had advanced to my neighbors and others upon their hop
crops more than a hundred thousand dollars, which was lost. These people
simply could not pay, and I forgave the debt, taking no judgments
against them, and I have never regretted the action. All my
accumulations were swept away, and I quit the business--or, rather, the
business quit me.
After a long struggle with the hop plague, nearly all the hops were
plowed up and the land in the Puyallup valley and elsewhere was used for
dairy farming, fruit growing, and general crops. It is actually of a
higher value now than when it was bearing hops.
[Illustration: _United States Forest Service_
Going up the Chilkoot Pass.]
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
TRYING FOR A FORTUNE IN ALASKA
AFTER the failure of the hop business, I was left more or less at sea
for some years. I tried various other projects--among them the raising
of sugar beets. The country, we soon found, was not adapted to this
industry. Then I tried banking, likewise with little success. Finally I
decided to strike out for the mines of Alaska. This adventure, taken
when I was nearly three score and ten years of age, was full of exciting
experiences. Indeed, it left me richer only in experience.
I had lived in the old Oregon country forty-four years and had never
seen a mine. Mining had had no attraction for me. But when my
accumulations had all been swallowed up, I decided to take a chance. In
the spring of 1898 I made my first trip over the Chilkoot Pass, went
down the Yukon river to Dawson in a flatboat, and ran the famous White
Horse Rapids with my load of vegetables for the Klondike miners.
One may read most graphic descriptions of Chilkoot Pass; but the
difficulties met by those earlier fortune-seekers who tried it were
worse than the wildest fancy can picture. I started in with fifteen tons
of freight and got through with nine. On one stretch of two thousand
feet, I paid forty dollars a ton. Some others paid even more.
The trip part of the way reminded me of the scenes on the Plains in
1852, when the people and teams crowded each other on the several
parallel trails. At the pass, most of the travel came upon one track,
and that so steep the ascent could be made only by cutting steps in the
ice and snow--fifteen hundred steps in all. Frequently every step would
be full, while crowds jostled each other at the foot of the ascent to
get into the single file, each man carrying a hundred-pound pack on his
back.
After all sorts of trying experiences, I finally arrived in Dawson,
where I sold my fresh potatoes at thirty-six dollars a bushel and other
things at proportionate prices. In two weeks I started up the river,
homeward bound, with two hundred ounces of Klondike gold in my belt. But
four round trips in two years satisfied me that I did not want any more
of such experiences.
Once, fortunately, I was detained for a couple of days, and thereby
escaped an avalanche that buried fifty-two other people in the snow. I
passed by the morgue the second day after the catastrophe on my way to
the summit, doubtless over the bodies of many unknown dead, embedded so
deeply in the snow that it was utterly impossible to recover them.
The good ducking I received in my first passage through the White Horse
Rapids made me resolve I would not go through there again. But I did it
on the very next trip that same year, and came out of it dry. Again,
when going down the Thirty-Mile River, it did seem that we could not
escape being dashed upon the rocks. But somehow or other we got through
safely, though the bank was strewn with wrecks and the waters had
swallowed up many victims.
When the Yukon proper was reached, the current was less swift, but the
shoals were numerous. More than once we were "hung up" on the bar, each
time uncertain how we should get off. No mishap resulted, except once
when a hole was jammed into the scow, and we thought we were "goners"
for sure; but we effected a landing so quickly that we unloaded our
cargo dry.
While I now blame myself for taking such risks, I must admit that I
enjoyed it. I was sustained, no doubt, by high hopes of coming out with
my "pile." But fate or something else was against me, for mining
ventures swept all my gains away "slick as a mitten," as the old phrase
goes. I came out over the rotten ice of the Yukon in April of 1901 to
stay, and to vow I never wanted to see another mine or visit another
mining country.
In two weeks after my arrival home my wife and I celebrated our golden
wedding. There was nothing but a golden welcome home, even if I had not
returned with my pockets filled with gold.
Since I was then past my allotted three score years and ten, it
naturally seemed that my ventures were at an end. But for many of these
years I had been cherishing a dream that I felt must come true to round
out my days most satisfactorily. I longed to go back over the old Oregon
Trail and mark it for all time for the children of the pioneers who
blazed it, and for the world. How that dream was made to come true is
the story to be told in the succeeding part of this book of pioneer
stories.
PART THREE
RETRACING THE OLD OREGON TRAIL
[Illustration: With the development of railroad construction it was
thought that roads would go out of use except for local communication.
But since the advent of motor vehicles, transcontinental highways have
again become of great importance. For many reasons it is highly
desirable that there should be good roads clear across the continent.
Two have been proposed, and in sections meet the requirements of a great
transcontinental highway; but neither is yet completed. One is the
Oregon Highway, which follows the old Oregon Trail. This is the route
over which Ezra Meeker traveled by ox-team in 1906 and on which many
monuments have been erected to commemorate the pioneers of the 1840's
and '50's. The other is the Lincoln Highway, shown by the lighter line
on this map.]
[Illustration: Out on the trail again.]
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
A PLAN FOR A MEMORIAL TO THE PIONEERS
THE ox is passing--in fact, has passed. The old-time spinning wheel and
the hand loom, the quaint old cobbler's bench with its handmade lasts
and shoe pegs, the heavy iron mush pot on the crane in the chimney
corner,--all have gone. The men and women of sixty years or more ago are
passing, too. All are laid aside for what is new in the drama of life.
While these old-time ways and scenes and actors have had their day, yet
the experiences and the lessons they taught are not lost to the world.
The difference between a civilized and an untutored people lies in the
application of experiences. The civilized man builds upon the
foundations of the past, with hope and ambition for the future. The
savage has neither past nor aspiration for the future. To keep the flame
of patriotism alive, we must keep the memory of the past vividly before
us.
It was with these thoughts in mind that the expedition to mark the old
Oregon Trail was undertaken. There was this further thought, that on
this trail heroic men and women had fought a veritable battle--a battle
that wrested half a continent from the native race and from another
mighty nation contending for mastery in unknown regions of the West. To
mark the field of that battle for future generations was a duty waiting
for some one; I determined to be the one to fulfill it.
The journey back over the old Oregon Trail by ox team was made during my
seventy-seventh year. On January 29, 1906, I left my home in Puyallup,
Washington, and on November 29, 1907, just twenty-two months later to
the day, I reached Washington, our national capital, with my cattle and
my old prairie schooner. Not all of this time was spent in travel, of
course; a good deal of it was taken up in furthering the purpose of the
trip by arranging for the erection and dedication of monuments to mark
the Trail.
To accomplish the purpose of marking the trail would have been enough to
make the journey worth while to me, besides all the interest of
freshening my recollections of old times and reviving old memories.
There is not space in this book to dwell on all the contrasts that came
to my mind constantly,--of the uncleared forests with the farms and
orchards of today, of the unbroken prairie lands with the ranches and
farms and cities that now border the old trail from the Rockies to the
Mississippi. There is nothing like an ox-team journey, I maintain, to
make a person realize this country, realize its size, the number of its
people, and the variety of conditions in which they live and of
occupations by which they live. I wish I could share with every boy and
girl in the country the panorama view that unrolled itself before me in
this journey from tidewater to tidewater.