PIONEERS OF THE FORTIES
In August 1845 Col. M. T. Simmons, George Wauch and seven others arrived
at Budd’s inlet, under the pilotage of Peter Bercier, the first American
citizens who ever settled north of the Columbia river. Being pleased
with the appearance of the country Col. Simmons returned to the Columbia
where he had left his family and in October of the same year moved over
accompanied by J. McAllister, D. Kindred, Gabriel Jones, Geo. Bush and
families, and J. Ferguson and S. B. Crocket, single men. They at first
settled on prairies from one to eight miles back of the present town of
Olympia.
They were fifteen days in completing this journey from Cowlitz landing to
the Sound, a distance of 60 miles, being compelled to cut a trail through
the timbered part of the country.
In the fall of the same year J. R. Jackson located at Aurora.
In 1846 S. S. Ford and J. Borst settled on the Chickeeles river, Packwood
and Eaton with their families also joined the American settlers on the
Sound the same year and Col. Simmons erected the first American grist
mill north of the Columbia river. Previous to this the inhabitants had to
subsist on boiled wheat or do their grinding with hand mills.
In 1847 the first house, a log cabin, was built in Olympia and E.
Sylvester, Chambers, Brail and Shayer located on the Sound during the
same year. The first saw mill was erected at the falls of Deschutes
river by Col. Simmons and his friends during the same year. In June 1848
the Rev. Father Richard established the Roman Catholic mission of St.
Joseph on Budd’s inlet, one mile and a half below Olympia, and a few more
families were added to the settlement of the Sound country that year.
In the year 1849 the brig Orbit from San Francisco put into Budd’s inlet
for a load of piles and that was the opening of the lumber trade.
In 1850 the first frame house was put up in Olympia, and during the same
year Col. I. N. Eby made a settlement on Whidby island and a number of
other improvements and new settlements were made during the year. In 1851
Fort Steilacoom was established by Capt. L. Balch, and Bachelor, Plummer,
Pettygrove, Hastings and Wilson, names familiar even at this day around
Port Townsend, came in the same year, while Steilacoom City by J. B.
Chapman and New York (Alki point) by Mr. Lowe were founded.
From the beginning of the 50’s the settlement of the country became too
swift to permit of following the individual pioneers in their brave and
daring exploits in hewing homes out of the primeval wilderness. There
was no general way of reaching Puget Sound up to this time except by the
toilsome trail from the Columbia river, and the necessity of a steamer
from San Francisco became the leading topic in the settlements. Capt.
A. B. Gove of the ship Pacific took the matter up and agitation, as it
always does, soon after had the desired effect.
The report of Wilke’s expedition and the development of the fur trade
caused American interests to be directed toward this country. The account
of Joe Meek who went overland from Walla Walla and gave such glowing
descriptions of the Territory of Oregon had its effect, 1848, as he
expressed himself; “this was the finest country that ever a bird flew
over.”
The lower house of Congress passed a bill to establish a territorial
government for Oregon January 10, 1847, but many difficulties were in
the way before it became a law, and the slave question, 1848, had its
influence. It was in the middle of August of the last year of President
Polk’s administration before the territorial government bill for Oregon
became a law and the long journey over the mountains caused much more
delay.
Joseph Lane of Indiana was appointed Oregon’s first Governor with
Knitzing Pritchett of Pennsylvania as Secretary, W. P. Bryant of Indiana
as Chief Justice, F. Turney of Illinois and P. H. Burnett of Oregon
as Associate Justices, I. W. R. Bromley of New York as United States
Attorney, Joseph L. Meek Marshal and John Adair of Kentucky Collector of
the District of Oregon. Turney declining, O. C. Pratt of Ohio was named
in his place. Bromley also declined and Amory Holbrook was appointed in
his place. The party landed at Oregon City two days before the expiration
of Polk’s term of office.
During the fall of 1852 the people of Northern Oregon, now Washington,
were loud in their demands for a separate territory and The Columbian,
a bright little paper published at Olympia, became a zealous worker in
behalf of a separate jurisdiction.
Northern Oregon was at first slow to attract the full tide of emigration,
the worn out travelers who had journeyed across the plains were glad to
find a resting place in the valleys of the Columbia or Willamette and
those people who had homes established in Southern Oregon were always
eager to discourage the emigration to the northern territory and often
circulated reports condemning the Puget Sound country that caused a
degree of enmity to exist between the two sections of the Northwest. The
majority of the population being south of the Columbia river had the
result of causing the attention of the government to be always directed
to that part of the country and every appropriation from Congress was for
the benefit of Southern Oregon and for a time the country bordering on
Puget Sound was left to take care of itself. That naturally caused the
people who had sought homes in that northern part of the country to ask
that they be formed into a separate territory.
Not among the least of the trials and dangers which beset the early
pioneer, were those which arose by reason of the contact with Indians.
The average Siwash was a peaceable being, but the worst danger came from
the deceitful and savage northern tribes and east of the mountain clans.
From Nootka sound, Queen Charlotte and Vancouver islands, came swarms
of the red devils in their nimble canoes and left havoc and destruction
among many a pleasant home and settlement. Across the Cascade passes came
bands of painted warriors spreading terror and death on every side.
Numbers of the early settlers fell early victims to the atrocities of
these bloodthirsty bands, and their names are only remembered by the
few survivors whose silver hair and wrinkled features form objects of
interest, as they stand upon the pavement, in the pushing throng now
crowding our busy thoroughfares. If you will ask Charles Prosch, Hillory
Butler, Judge Swan, John Collins, G.A. Meigs and other old patriarchs yet
among us, they can recount many a stirring tale of battle and ambush, and
name over many an old settler who years ago gave away his life in his
efforts to pave the way for the thousands, who, happy in the peaceful
present, go about their daily work with scarce a thought of those early
times.
Concerning themselves the rightful owners of the soil, the Indians,
looked with jealous eye upon the daily encroachment of the whites and
regarded with increasing and ominous distrust the oft repeated and oft
broken promises held out to them that this land would be purchased
under treaties with the government. Then the habits of the Indian was
disgusting to the eye of civilization and no language can ever draw the
slothful and dirtyness of this people, yet there were many wrongs done
them and it was no more than could be expected that they would, true to
their nature, do such acts of barbarity as would shock the whites and
bring upon the Indian a terrible revenge and that a war for supremacy
would only end in his discomfiture.
“Money was plentiful,” remarks one of the early chroniclers of those
times, “and I was not a little surprised at the abundance of money in
the hands of the people. All but the farmers seemed to carry purses well
filled with twenty dollar gold pieces. The farmers had been driven from
their homes and impoverished by the Indian wars of 1856, from the effects
of which they had not had time to recover; but the men engaged in cutting
piles and logging for the mills (and they comprised a large proportion
of the whites here) suffered but little from the same cause. The man
who owned the building in which I first printed my paper could neither
read nor write, but managed to earn thirty dollars a day by hauling piles
with three yoke of oxen from the timber to the water. Soldiers received
permission from the officers to cut these piles, and earned ten dollars
each a day. All lumbermen were paid in like manner.”
The now historic Hudsons Bay company was in early Washington days a power
in the wilderness and with the native Indians. Their agents and trappers
encroached upon every square mile of wilderness, almost from Hudsons
bay to Puget Sound. Their forts occupied the most important places in
the developing Northwest, and were viewed with more or less of distrust
by American settlers. Fortunately, a friendly and parental government
intervened in time, to the great advantage of the pioneers dwelling
upon the disputed country. First a ten years’ lease of, and then final
purchase of the improvements of the Hudsons Bay company did away forever
with the English fur monopoly in Washington territory.
In 1858 the permanent white settlement on Puget Sound numbered, according
to one chronologer, 2500. The festive boomer in real estate and the
dispenser of town lots and “wildcat” schemes was a being incognito. His
sun had not then risen. A single newcomer in those times was an event of
neighborhood notoriety. The blowing of an incoming steamer’s whistle was
a signal for every resident, male, female, child and Indian to hasten
to the landing, the former to peer into the faces of the passengers for
friends or relatives, the latter to gape in open-eyed astonishment at the
white man’s monster, the steamboat.
[Illustration]