ROMANCE IN REAL LIFE
A long time ago an English whaling bark, after many months of hardship on
the voyage, was caught in a heavy gale off Vancouver island coast. After
a gallant effort to save the ship and ride out the storm, the captain and
crew took to the life-boat, and though a long way from land and with the
tempest howling about them, struck bravely out for safety. Nothing was
ever heard or seen of the sinking ship. But one of the brave crew reached
land to live to tell the awful tale of shipwreck and death which engulfed
his companions. It was while trying to make land through the surf of
Queen Charlotte sound, that the captain and crew went down. The empty and
battered boat was cast upon the shore and with it one half-drowned sailor
who, after a time was able to rise from the sand and stagger about.
It was during the stormy winter of 1843, a time long antedating the
first general appearance of the settlers. In all the northwest there was
scarcely a clearing or hamlet. An occasional white-winged sail dotted
the water horizon or came to anchor in some quiet bay or harbor of the
Straits of Fuca, or the still less frequented waters of Queen Charlotte
sound. Ever and anon a Hudsons Bay company’s trapper or voyager emerged
from the bush upon the shore to remain a few days and then would be
gone again prosecuting his search after skins. That was all there was
to the civilization of the inhospitable northwest. The land all about
belonged to the simple children of nature the Indian, the beaver and
the bear. Such was the situation when the hero of our story was thrown
almost drowned upon the beach of Queen Charlotte sound. Scarcely had the
half-drowned mariner reached dry land than he was set upon by a party of
Indians and taken prisoner. He was escorted to the village of the head
chief and the usual council of war held by the braves to determine his
fate. The prisoner knew no word of the Chinook jargon or the King George
Indian tongue and could not gain the slightest inkling of the drift of
the pow-wow. For a time he felt that he was reserved for a fate ten times
worse than death at sea, and he cursed fate that he was not permitted to
go down with his companions and leave his bones to whiten and bleach in
the cavernous depths of old ocean. But he was not to be burned at the
stake, nor killed and eaten. The Indians at the close of their council
made no demonstration or dangerous move, and he soon learned that he was
to remain a prisoner and slave. His English boat was pulled upon the
beach and left to rot away. Time passed on and days run into months and
months swelled into years. The sailor soon fell into the style of living
of the natives and was adopted into the tribe, learned their strange
tongue and customs, sat in their councils, went with them on their long
canoe voyages to the south and towards the north, followed them in their
hunts for the bear, beaver and elk; engaged in their wars with their
enemies, dressed in their simple style, and was in every way save by
blood an Indian.
For five long years the prisoner lived with his captors on the shores of
Queen Charlotte sound, but there came a time when savage life palled and
the longing to see the face of a white man and speak his natural language
grew too strong to be shaken off. All the time he had lived with the
Indians he had not seen a white person. So in 1848 the sailor whose true
name was William Jarman, sought an opportunity to escape from the village
of his adopted people. He headed his canoe to the south and quickly and
quietly paddled away toward the waters of Puget Sound, hoping to fall
in with some trapper on the beach, or mayhap catch a sail in the waters
towards which he was going. Without mishap he got as far south as Point
Wilson, now Point Wilson light house, near Port Townsend, but had the
misfortune here to be overtaken by the very people with whom he had lived
so long. Broken and bewildered by his recapture, poor Jarman was escorted
back to the village in triumphant glee by his swarthy friends, now turned
to foes. The policy of the Indians again proved to be to keep him among
them as an unwilling prisoner and for four years more Jarman remained a
captive and prisoner. Afraid that he would again attempt to escape the
Indians took him to Queen Charlotte island, and he was not permitted to
return to the main land. Notwithstanding the close surveillance kept
upon him the sailor at the end of four years, a second time managed to
get away and this time made good his escape. By the time he reached the
Sound on his second escape many settlers had arrived and Jarman found
company and protection. Such was his wild and uncouth appearance that
his later friends gave him the sobriquet of “Blanket Bill.” He took up
his residence on the Sound, lived at Seattle, Port Townsend and Whatcom,
or about the settlements which as time passed on grew to those towns.
Blanket Bill after his nine years of wonderful life among the savages
never could quite get over the habits and peculiarities he had learned,
and consequently he became a notorious character among the white settlers
on the Sound. He was living up to a very short time ago somewhere in the
bounds of Whatcom county.