FROM COLUMBIA RIVER TO PUGET SOUND.
"Can I get home tonight?" I asked myself, while the sun was yet high
one afternoon of the last week of June (1853).
I was well up river, on the left bank of the Cowlitz. I could not tell
how far, for there were no milestones, or way places to break the
monotony of the crooked, half obstructed trail leading down stream.
I knew that at the best it would be a race with the sun, for there
were many miles between me and the cabin, but the days were long, and
the twilight longer, and I would camp that much nearer home if I made
haste. My pack had been discarded on the Sound; I did not even have
either coat or blanket. The heavy, woolen shirt, often worn outside
the pants, will be well remembered by my old-time pioneer readers.
Added to this, the well worn slouch hat, and worn shoes, both of which
gave ample ventilation, completed my dress; socks, I had none, neither
suspenders, the improvised belt taking their place; and so I was
dressed suitable for the race, and was eager for the trial.
I had parted with my brother at Olympia, where he had come to set me
that far on my journey; he to return to the claims we had taken, and
I to make my way across country for the wife and baby, to remove them
to our new home. I did not particularly mind the camping so much if
necessary, but did not fancy the idea of lying out so near home, if I
could by extra exertion reach the cabin that night. I did not have the
friendly ox to snug up to for warmth, as in so many bivouacs while on
the plains, but I had matches, and there were many mossy places for
a bed and friendly shelter of the drooping cedars. We never thought
of "catching cold" by lying on the ground or on cedar boughs, or from
getting a good drenching. Somehow it did seem I was free from all
care of bodily ailment, and could endure continued exertion for long
hours without the least inconvenience. The readers of this generation
doubtless will be ready to pour out their sympathy for the hardships of
the lonely trail, and lone camp, and the supperless bed of boughs, but
they may as well reserve this for others of the pioneers whose systems
were less able to bear the unusual strain of the new conditions. But
the camp had to be made; the cabin could not be reached, for the trail
could not be followed at night, nor the Kalama Creek crossed; so,
slackening my pace at nightfall to gradually cool my system, I finally
made my camp and slept, as sound as if on a bed of down, with the
consolation that the night was short and that I could see to travel by
3 o'clock, and it did not make so very much difference, after all.
I can truly say that of all those years of camp and cabin life, I do
not look upon them as years of hardship. To be sure, our food was plain
as well as dress, our hours of labor long and labor frequently severe,
and that the pioneers appeared rough and uncouth, yet underlying all
this, there ran a vein of good cheer, of hopefulness, of the intense
interest always engendered with strife to overcome difficulties where
one is the employer as well as the employed. We never watched for the
sun to go down, or for the seven o'clock whistle, or for the boss to
quicken our steps, for the days were always too short, and interest in
our work always unabated.
The cabin could not be seen for a long distance on the trail, but I
thought I caught sight of a curl of smoke and then immediately knew I
did, and that settled it that all was well in the cabin. But when a
little nearer, a little lady in almost bloomer dress was espied milking
a cow, and a frisking, fat calf in the pen was seen, then I knew, and
all solicitude vanished. The little lady never finished milking that
cow, nor did she ever milk others when the husband was at home, though
she knew how well enough, and never felt above such work if a necessity
arose, but we parceled out duties on a different basis, with each to
their suited parts. The bloom on the cheek of the little wife, the
baby in the cabin as fat as the calf, told the story of good health and
plentitude of food, and brought good cheer with the welcome home. The
dried potato eyes had just been planted, although it was then the first
week of July, following the receding waters of the June freshet up the
Columbia, and were sprouting vigorously. I may say, in passing, there
came a crop from these of nearly four hundred bushels at harvest time.
It did seem there were so many things to talk about that one could
scarcely tell where to begin or when to stop. "Why, at Olympia, eggs
were a dollar a dozen. I saw them selling at that. That butter you
have there on the shelf would bring a dollar a pound as fast as you
could weigh it out; I saw stuff they called butter sell for that;
then potatoes were selling for $3.00 a bushel and onions at $4.00.
Everything the farmer raises sells high." "Who buys?" "Oh, almost
everybody has to buy; there's the ships and the timber camps, and the
hotels, and the—"
"Where do they get the money?"
"Why, everybody seems to have money. Some take it there with them.
Then men working in the timber camps get $4.00 a day and their board.
I saw one place where they paid $4.00 a cord for wood to ship to San
Francisco, and one can sell all the shingles he can make at $4.00 a
thousand, and I was offered 5 cents a foot for piles. If we had Buck
and Dandy over there we could make twenty dollars a day putting in
piles."
"Where could you get the piles?"
"Off the government land, of course. All help themselves to all they
want. Then there are the fish, and the clams, and the oysters, and—"
"But what about the land for a claim?"
That question was a stumper. The little wife never lost sight of that
bargain made before we were married, that we were going to be farmers;
and here now I found myself praising a country I could not say much
for its agricultural qualities, but other things quite foreign to that
interest.
But if we could sell produce higher, might we not well lower our
standard of an ideal farm? The claim I had taken was described with a
tinge of disappointment, falling so far below in quality of what we had
hoped to acquire, but still adhering to the resolution to be farmers,
we began the preparations for removal to the Sound.
The wife, baby, bedding, ox yoke, and log chain were sent up the
Cowlitz in a canoe, while Buck and Dandy and I renewed our acquaintance
by taking to the trail where we had our parting bivouac. We had camped
together many a night on the plains, and slept together literally, not
figuratively. I used to crowd up close under Buck's back while napping
on watch, for the double purpose of warmth and signal—warmth while at
rest, signal if the ox moved. On this occasion I was illy prepared for
a cool night camp, having neither blanket nor coat, as I had expected
to reach "Hard-Bread's" Hotel, where the people in the canoe would stop
over night. But I could not make it and so again laid on the trail to
renew the journey bright and early the next morning.
Hard Bread's is an odd name for a hotel, you will say; so it is, but
the name grew out of the fact that Gardner, the old widower that kept
"bachelor's" hall at the mouth of Toutle River, fed his customers on
hard tack three times a day, if perchance any one was unfortunate
enough to be compelled to take their meals at his place.
I found the little wife had not fared any better than I had on the
trail, and, in fact, not so well, for the floor of the cabin was a
great deal harder than the sand spit where I had passed the night, with
plenty of pure, fresh air, while she, in a closed cabin, in the same
room with many others, could neither boast of fresh air nor freedom
from creeping things that make life miserable. With her shoes for a
pillow, a shawl for covering, small wonder the report came "I did not
sleep a wink last night."
Judge Olney and wife were passengers in the same canoe and guests at
the same house with the wife, as also Frank Clark, who afterwards
played a prominent part at the bar, and in the political affairs of
Pierce County in particular, and incidentally of the whole Territory.
We soon arrived at the Cowlitz landing, and at the end of the canoe
journey, so, striking the tent that had served us so well on the
plains, and with a cheerful camp fire blazing for cooking, speedily
forgot the experience of the trail, the cramped passage in the canoe,
the hard bread, dirt and all, while enjoying the savory meal, the
like of which only the expert hands of the ladies of the plains could
prepare.
But now we had fifty miles of land to travel before us, and over such a
road! Words cannot describe that road, and so I will not try. One must
have traveled it to fully comprehend what it meant. However, we had
one consolation, and that was it would be worse in winter than at that
time. We had no wagon. Our wagon had been left at The Dalles, and we
never saw nor heard of it again. Our cows were gone—given for provender
to save the lives of the oxen during the deep December snow, and so
when we took account of stock, we had Buck and Dandy, the baby, and
a tent, an ox yoke and chain, enough clothing and bedding to keep us
comfortable, with but very little food and no money—that had all been
expended on the canoe passage.
Shall we pack the oxen and walk, and carry baby, or shall we build a
sled and drag our things over to the Sound, or shall I make an effort
to get a wagon? This latter proposition was the most attractive, and so
next morning, driving Buck and Dandy before me, leaving the wife and
baby to take care of the camp, the search for a wagon began.
That great hearted old pioneer, John R. Jackson, did not hesitate a
moment, stranger as I was, to say, "Yes, you can have two if you need
them." Jackson had settled eight years before, ten miles out from the
landing, and had an abundance around him, and like all those earlier
pioneers, took a pride in helping others who came later. Retracing the
road, night found me again in camp, and all hands happy, but Jackson
would not listen to allowing us to proceed the next day any farther
than his premises, where he would entertain us in his comfortable
cabin, and send us on our way the morning following, rejoicing in
plenty.
Without special incident or accident, we in due time arrived at the
foot of the falls of the Deschutes (Tumwater), and on the shore of
Puget Sound. Here a camp must be established again; the little wife and
baby left while I drove the wagon over the tedious road to Jackson's
and then returned with the oxen to tide water.
The reader may well imagine my feelings, when, upon my return, my
tent, wife, baby, and all were gone. We knew before I started on my
return trip that smallpox was raging among the Indians, and that a camp
where this disease was prevalent was in sight less than a quarter of
a mile away. The present-day reader must remember that dread disease
had terrors then that, since universal vaccination, it does not now
possess. Could it be possible my folks had been sick and had been
removed? The question, however, was soon solved. I had scarcely gotten
out of sight upon my trip before one of those royal pioneer matrons
came to the camp and pleaded and insisted and finally almost frightened
the little wife to go and share her house with her which was near by,
and be out of danger from the smallpox.
And that was the way we traveled from the Columbia River to Puget Sound.
God bless those earlier pioneers; they were all good to us, sometimes
to the point of embarrassment by their generous hospitality.
I can not dismiss this subject without reverting to one such, in
particular, who gave his whole crop during the winter of which I have
just written, to start immigrants on the road to prosperity, and, in
some instances, to prevent suffering.
In consequence of the large immigration and increased demand, prices
of provisions had run sky high, and out of reach of some of the recent
immigrants with large families. George Bush had squatted on a claim
seven miles south of Olympia, in 1845, and had an abundance of farm
produce, but would not sell a pound of anything to a speculator; but
to immigrants, for seed or for immediate pressing wants, to all alike,
without money and without price—"return it when you can," he would
say—and so divided up his whole crop, then worth thousands of dollars.
And yet this man's oath could not at that time be taken; neither could
he sue in the courts or acquire title to the land upon which he lived,
or any land. He had negro blood in his veins, and under the law of this
great country, then, was a proscribed outcast. Conditions do change as
time passes. The wrong was so flagrant in this particular case that a
special act of Congress enabled this old, big-hearted pioneer of 1845
to hold his claim, and his descendants are living on it yet.
I have been so impressed with the altruistic character of this
truly great man that I have procured this testimonial from a close
acquaintance and neighbor, Prof. Ayres, who has kindly written the
history of the life of this truly great pioneer.
A GREAT PIONEER—GEORGE BUSH, THE VOYAGER.
The history of the Northwest settlement cannot be fully written without
an account of George Bush, who organized and led the first colony of
American settlers to the shores of Puget Sound, whose great humanity,
shrewd intelligence, and knowledge of the natives, who then numbered
thousands about the headwaters of the Sound, had much to do with
carrying the first settlers safely through all of the curses of famine
and war while the feeble colony was slowly gaining enough strength to
protect itself.
Mr. Bush claimed to have been born about 1791 in what is now Missouri,
but was then the French Colony of Louisiana, and in the extreme Far
West, and only reached by the most daring hunters. His early manhood
was spent in the employ of the great trading companies who reached out
into the Rock Mountains each season and gathered furs from the Indians
and the occasional white trappers.
Bush first began this work (?) with Rabidean, the Frenchman, who made
his headquarters at St. Louis, but later on enlisted with the Hudson's
Bay Company, which had been given unrestrained dominion over all
Canada outside of the settlements in the East, and, not satisfied with
that, sent its trading parties down across the national line, where it
was safe to do so. It was during this employment with the Hudson Bay
Company that Bush reached the Pacific Coast in the late twenties, and
while he did not get as far south as Puget Sound (then occupied by the
company and claimed as a part of the British Dominion), he learned of
its favorable climate, soil and fitness for settlement.
He then returned to Missouri about 1830, settled in Clay County,
married a German-American woman and raised a family of boys.
In 1843, Marcus Whitman made his famous trip from Oregon to the
national capital and excited the whole country by his stories of the
great possible future of the extreme Northwest and the duty of the
Government to insist upon its claim to dominion over the western coast
from the Mexican settlement in California up to the Russian possessions
in the far north.
Everything got into politics then, even more than now, and the
Democratic party, which until then had been the most aggressive in
extending the national bounds, took up the cry of "Fifty-four Forty or
Fight", to win what they knew would be a close contest for President in
1844.
This meant the taking possession of the whole thousand miles or more of
coast by settlement and driving the English out by threats or force.
As I have indicated before, the people of St. Louis and Missouri had
become deeply interested in the extreme west through their trading
interests, and as the retired voyager was one of the very few who knew
about the western coast and had sufficient fitness for leadership he
was encouraged by his friends to make up a party and cross the plains
to the new Oregon.
This was in the winter of 1843-4 and early in the spring, he, with four
other families and three single men, set out with a large outfit of
wagons and live stock over what is now known as the "Old Oregon Trail."
The names of this company were as follows:
George Bush, his wife and sons (Wm. Owen, Joseph, R. B., Sanford—now
living—and Jackson);
Col. M. T. Simmons, wife and seven children;
David Kindred, wife and one son;
Gabriel Jones, wife and three children;
Wm. McAllister, wife and several children, and the three young
bachelors, Samuel Crockett, Reuben Crowder, and Jesse Ferguson.
Of these families, the Jones and Kindreds are now extinct, and of the
original party only two sons of Col. Simmons and Sanford Bush are now
living. Semis Bush, the youngest son of George Bush, was born after
their arrival, in 1847, on Bush Prairie and, by the way, is perhaps the
oldest living white American born in the Puget Sound basin.
The Bush party suffered the usual hardships of the overland journey but
met no great disaster, and reached The Dalles late in the fall of 1844.
There they camped for the winter and decided their future plans.
At that time the headquarters of the Hudson's Bay Company, the sole
official representative of the British Government, was on the Columbia
River with its chief settlements at Vancouver and The Dalles.
It was the policy of the company to prevent all settlement north of
the Columbia River and confine its use to the fur-bearing industry and
depend upon the Indians for the necessary hunting and trapping. The
employes of the company consisted of the necessary factors and clerks,
some English, but more Scotch, while the rest, boatmen, etc., were
nearly all Canadian French.
The great chief factor for the whole west was Dr. McLoughlin, a
benevolent despot, well fitted to govern his savage dominion so long as
the Yankees kept away, but at the period in question he found himself
in a painful conflict between the interests of humanity and the demands
of his superiors.
The governing board in London was composed of members of the government
and aristocracy who were extremely resentful of the demands and claims
of the American politicians and gave most imperative orders to Governor
McLoughlin and the other factors and agents on the Coast to discourage
all settlement by the Americans north of the Columbia River and to
furnish no supplies or other assistance to the American travelers or
settlers. This prohibition also extended, though less rigidly, to the
Oregon settlements south of the Columbia, for the company saw clearly
that unless the emigration could be checked the vast profits of their
fast growing trade in the west would soon be lost.
Sanford Bush, though a small boy at the time, remembers the trip well,
and tells me that the main dependence of his father's party and the
other early settlers was the friendliness of the French Canadians, who
had much more sympathy for the poor settlers than with the English
stockholders, and did not hesitate to smuggle all sorts of supplies,
especially of food, from their farms into the hands of the Americans,
and it was in this emergency that the former experience and intimate
acquaintance of George Bush with the French and their desire to assist
him turned his attention to the Puget Sound country and made it
possible for him to smuggle his party up into territory that was yet
claimed by the British, without its becoming officially known to the
chief factor. At that time the road from the Columbia River, or rather
from the landing on the Cowlitz River, to the head of the Sound was
only a single trail through dense forests, and that was always more or
less blocked by falling timber. No vehicle could get through and, while
Sanford says that the party did get some of the twenty wagons with
which they left Missouri through to The Dalles, they only reached the
Sound with what they could pack on their animals or drag on rude sleds.
In this condition the little party reached the extreme head of the
Sound at Tumwater early in the spring of 1845 and proceeded to take
possession of such tracts of land as took their fancy, covering what
is now the town of Tumwater and back along the west side of the little
Des Chutes River, and out on the prairie, which begins about a mile
south of the landing and extends down about three miles to a rise of
ground not far from the river. Upon this commanding site George Bush
pitched his last camp and there his family descendants have lived to
the present time, and the prairie of some five square miles extent has
always been known as Bush Prairie.
Mr. Bush was a farmer, and having brought as much live stock as
possible he at once broke up some of the best of the open prairie.
He was so successful that in a very few years his farm was the main
resource for grain, vegetables and fruit for supplying the newcomers in
that region.
Let me say in passing that his memory is honored to this day among the
early families for the fact that while he was at times the only man in
the country with food for sale he would never take advantage by raising
the price nor allow anyone to buy more than his own needs during an
emergency.
In 1845 there were no mills on the Sound for grinding grain nor sawing
lumber and as quick as the necessary outfit could be secured, which was
about three years later, all of the Bush party, with Mr. Simmons as
manager, joined in constructing a combined saw and grist mill at the
foot of the lower Tumwater Fall, and where the small streams and rafts
of timber could reach it at high tide.
For the grist mill, the main question was a pair of grinding stones and
these were secured from a granite boulder on the shore of Mud Bay, the
western branch of Budd's Inlet, at the head of which Tumwater and (two
miles north) Olympia are situated. A man named Hamm, a stonecutter by
trade, worked out and dressed the stones for use. I have tried to find
these but am told that one was allowed to sink into the mud near the
old mill site, while the other was taken out to the Bush farm, but it
cracked to pieces many years ago and is now all gone.
It may be of interest to add that in the late seventies a man by the
name of Horton originated the patent wood pipe industry in a mill on
the site of the first mill.
In the same year of the first mill, in 1848, was loaded the first cargo
of freight for export from the Upper Sound. This was on the brig Orbit,
which had just come from the east around the Horn, and for this also
Bush and his party made up a cargo of piles and hand-sawed shingles,
etc. The vessel had brought quite a quantity of supplies and these made
the first respectable stock of goods for the little store which the
party had started in connection with the mill.
THE FANNING MILL.
The Bush family still possess and use an interesting relic of that
first vessel. The Orbit brought out from the east two families named
Rider and Moulton, and in their outfit were two fanning mills. So far
as known, these were the first ever brought to the Sound and were
certainly the first outside of Nisqually, the Hudson Bay station for
the Sound.
As Bush was the greatest grain raiser and the new grist mill could not
well get along without it, Mr. Bush secured one of these fanning mills
and for some time all of the settlers who attempted to raise grain were
permitted to use it.
It is singular that this old hand mill, which was such an important and
hard worked factor in the first settlement, should, sixty-five years
later, still be as efficient as ever and still be a necessity for the
grandchildren of the old pioneer.
The other mill was secured by John R. Jackson, who was the first
American settler on Cowlitz Prairie, and was also a former employe of
the Hudson's Bay Company.
As I have said before, George Bush was not only remarkable, for his
time, in the virtues of humanity, sympathy and wise justice, which
virtues have been well kept by his descendants, but he had a rare power
over the natives and, while the different tribes often fought out their
quarrels in the neighborhood, none of the Bush family was ever molested
so long as they kept west of the Des Chutes River. Sanford tells of one
occasion when two tribes, numbering many hundreds, fought all day on
the Bush farm but both sides promised not to injure the whites.
As, however, the natives had only a few very poor guns and little
ammunition, only a few were hurt and the battle consisted mostly of
yells and insults.
I asked Sanford and Lewis about Chief Leschi. They say he often came
to their place up to the time of the war, and as his mother belonged
to the more fierce Klickitats of the trans-mountain tribes, so Leschi
was more of a positive and aggressive character than his clam-digging
brothers, but was always friendly and respectful to those who treated
him fairly.
THE FIRST COUGAR.
It was during one of Leschi's visits to their place, about 1850, that
one of the ponies was killed by some wild animal. The same thing had
happened several times about the Cowlitz but none of the Indians nor
any of the French trappers had, up to that time, ever seen any around
that was capable of the mischief. Mr. Bush set a large bear trap that
he had brought from Missouri near the remains of the pony and was
fortunate enough to capture what proved to be a remarkably long bodied
and long tailed cougar, the first, so far as the Bush brothers could
learn, that had ever been seen on the Sound. In honor of the event,
Leschi was allowed to take charge of removing and preparing the skin of
the new kind of game.
Asked about the cause of the Indian war which was started by Leschi
on the ground that his people had been deceived and robbed in the
outlining of their reservation on the Nisqually, Sanford and Lewis
assert positively that all of the whites of the Tumwater and Bush
Prairie section were agreed that the Indians were badly wronged and
there was much sympathy with the Leschi party.
When the war opened, Leschi sent word to Bush promising that none of
the whites on the west side of the Des Chutes would be molested and
this proved to be true, though all of the natives were in a restless
condition over the trouble for many months.
The most critical experience that the Bush company had with the Indians
was a few years before, in May, 1849, when Pat Kamm, chief of the
Snoqualmies, landed nearby on the bay (Budd Inlet) with a great fleet
of war canoes, and made it known that they were going to destroy all
of the whites. In this emergency, a squad went down and told them
that Chief Bush had a terrible great gun that would sink all of the
canoes as soon as they should come around what is now known as Capitol
Point. This alarmed the natives so much that they finally gave up their
purpose and returned down Sound. It is to be added that the "terrible
gun" was a very heavy rifle that Bush had brought from the East and
which kicked so badly that nobody dared fire it twice.
Mr. Bush carried on his farm with great success and kept the high
respect and good will of all the settlement until his death in 1867 at
the age of 76. His eldest son, William Owen, who succeeded his father
as the recognized head of the family, was born in 1832 and was twelve
years old when he crossed the plains. He had the same gentle virtues
of his father and was always consulted in the affairs and politics of
Thurston County. During the first state legislature of '89-90, he was
an active and influential member. While he carried on both a logging
and farming business, he was also greatly interested in the world
fairs, and at Philadelphia, Chicago and St. Louis took several notable
prizes for his remarkable exhibits of Puget Sound productions, all
raised on his own farm. At the Centennial Fair, in 1876, he took the
world's prize for wheat; and from the Chicago Fair he brought back over
two hundred kinds of grain, which he raised in separate rows in one
field.
Wm. Owen died in 1906 and his brother Sanford, with two sons of Col.
Simmons were all that are left of the first American colony of Puget
Sound.