BUILDING THE NATCHESS PASS ROAD—[CONCLUDED.]
Allen's party left Steilacoom for this work July 30th, (1853), and was
still at work on the 26th of September, when he wrote: "We will be
through this week, having completed the western portion of the road."
With twenty men in sixty days and over sixty miles to cut, he could not
be expected to build much of a road.
The other party, under Kirtley, left Olympia, thirteen strong, July
19th, and was back again August 20th, and so could not have done very
effective work on the east slope, as it would take at least a third of
the time to make the trip out and back from their field of labor.
With a view of trying to settle the disputed points, I wrote to my old
time friend, A. J. Burge, one of the Allen party, to get information
from first hands, and have this characteristic reply:
"Wenass, December 8th, 1904.
"Friend Meeker.—Sir: Your letter dated Nov. 26, 1904, at hand.
Sir, I am quite sick. I will try to sit up long enough to
scratch an answer to your questions. Kirtley's men fell out
among themselves. I well remember Jack Perkins had a black eye.
Kirtley, as I understood, was to go (to) Wenass creek, thence cut
a wagon road from Wenass to the Natchess River, thence up the
Natchess River until they met Allen's party. It is my opinion
they did commence at Wenass. There were three notches cut in
many of the large trees (logs). I can find some of these trees
yet where these notches show. Allen did not know Kirtley and his
party had abandoned the enterprise until Ehformer told him. He
expressed much surprise and regret. I packed the provisions for
Allen's party. The last trip I made I found Allen and his party
six or eight miles down the Natchess River. I was sent back to
the summit of the mountain to search for a pack mule and a pack
horse. These two animals were used by the working party to move
their camp outfit, and their provisions. When they returned they
told me that they cut the road down to where Kirtley's party left
off. Of my own knowledge I can safely say Allen's party cut the
road from John Montgomery's[16] to some six or maybe eight miles
down the Natchess River, and it was four days after that before
they came to the summit on their return.
"It is possible Kirtley's party slighted their work to the extent
that made it necessary for the immigrants to take their axes in
hand. I consider Kirtley a dead failure at anything. Kirtley's
party came home more than a month before we came in. If Van Ogle
is not insane he ought to remember.
"Allen's party cut the road out from six to eight miles down the
Natchess River from John Montgomery's. The valley on the Natchess
River is too narrow for any mistake to occur.
"The first men that came through came with James and his brother,
Charles Biles, Sargent, Downey, James Longmire, Van Ogle,
two Atkins, Lane, a brother-in-law of Sargent, Kincaid, two
Woolery's, Lane of Puyallup, E. A. Light, John Eagan (Reagan),
Charley Fitch. Meeker, I am quite sick; when I get well I will
write more detailed account; it is as much as I can do to sit up."
"Yours in haste, as ever,
"A. J. BURGE."
This man I have known for over fifty years, and it touched me to think
at the age bordering on eighty, he should get up out of a sick bed
to comply with my request. He has written the truth, and some of the
information we could get in no other way.
It seems that some people live a charmed life. Burge was shot by a
would-be assassin a few miles out from Steilacoom over forty years ago,
the bullet going through his neck, just missing the jugular vein.
While it is a complete digression, nevertheless, just as interesting
here as elsewhere, so I will tell the story of this shooting to further
illustrate conditions of early settlement on the Nisqually plains. The
man with the thirteen cows and thirty calves mentioned elsewhere, lived
near Burge. The most desperate character I ever knew, Charles McDaniel,
also was a near neighbor, but a friend of Andy, as we used to call
Burge. Both lost stock that could be traced directly to their neighbor,
Wren, the man with the extra calves, but it was no use to prosecute him
as a jury could not be procured that would convict. I had myself tried
it in our court with the direct evidence of the branded hide taken
from him, but a bribed juryman refused to convict. For a few years and
for this district and with the class previously described as occupying
the country adjacent to Steilacoom, there seemed to be no redress
through our courts. Finally Burge and McDaniel waylaid their neighbor
a few miles out from Steilacoom, tied him to a tree, and whipped him
most unmercifully. I have never yet given my approval to mob law and
never will, believing that it is better to suffer awhile, bide one's
time until laws can be enforced, rather than to join in actions that
will breed contempt for law and lead to anarchy; but, if ever there
was a justifiable case of men taking the law in their own hands, this
was one of them, and is introduced here to illustrate a condition of
affairs that had grown up which seemed well nigh intolerable. After
the whipping Wren was warned to leave the country, which he could not
well do, tied to a tree as he was until third parties discovered and
released him, but which he speedily did, although the wealthiest man
in the county. No prosecutions followed, but in the lapse of time a
colored man appeared at Steilacoom and spent much time hunting herbs
on the prairies, until one day Burge was going home from Steilacoom in
his wagon, when this centre shot was fired with the result as related.
The colored man disappeared as mysteriously as he came, but everyone
believed he had been hired to assassinate Burge and McDaniel, and as
afterwards proven was the case.
But the trouble was not ended here. The lawless neighbor had gone, but
not lawlessness. The old story that lawlessness begets lawlessness was
again proven. McDaniel and others concluded that as Wren was gone,
they could prey upon his land holdings, which for twenty-five years
in Pierce County was no more than squatter's rights, in consequence
of that intolerable claim of the Puget Sound Agricultural Company,
mentioned elsewhere. At this, most of the community rebelled and
warned McDaniel, but to no purpose, until finally he was shot down on
the streets of Steilacoom, or rather a vacant lot in a public place,
and lay for hours in his death struggles uncared for, and his pal
murdered in the wagon that was carrying him to a scaffold. The two
had been waylaid, but had escaped, only to meet their fate in a more
public manner. Burge narrowly escaped a like fate at the hands of
the mob, because of his near neighborship with McDaniel and of his
participation with him in the first instance that had led up to the
final catastrophe. But Burge was an honorable man, though rough in
manner, yet just in his dealings, while McDaniel was a gambler and a
blackleg of the very worst imaginable type. The Indian war had brought
to the front many vicious characters, and the actions of some officials
in high places had encouraged lawlessness, so, as a community, the
nearby country round and about Steilacoom was scourged almost beyond
belief.
And yet there were genuine pioneer settlements in not very far off
regions of this storm center of lawlessness, where the law was as
cheerfully obeyed as in any old and well settled community, where crime
was scarcely known, and where family ties were held as sacred as any
place on earth, and where finally the influence spread over the whole
land and the whole community leavened.
By these incidents related it will be seen that pioneers were neither
all saints nor all sinners, but like the older communities had their
trials other than the supposed discomforts incident to pioneer life.
The reader may not have noticed that Burge in his letter mentions
that there are still trees (he means logs), yet to be seen with the
three notches cut in them, where the immigrant road had been cut. I had
forgotten the third notch, but it all comes back to me now that he has
mentioned it. These logs that we bridged up to and cut the notches in
for the wheels in most cases had to have the third notch in the center
to save the coupling pole or reach from catching on the log, especially
where the bridging did not extend out far from the log to be crossed.
Oftentimes the wagon would be unloaded, the wagon box taken off, the
wagon uncoupled and taken over the obstruction or down or up it, as the
case might be, to be loaded again beyond.
It will be noticed by Mr. Himes' letter that their party came all the
way up the canyon and crossed the Natchess River 68 times while I
crossed it but thirty odd times. At or near the 32d crossing, the road
workers took to the table land and abandoned the lower stretch of the
canyon, and through that portion the train which Mr. Himes refers to
was compelled to cut their own road for a long stretch. But that part
reported cut was certainly a hard road to travel, and we had to work
more or less all the way down the mountain; as Colonel E. J. Allen, who
is yet alive, quaintly put it in a recent letter: "Assuredly the road
was not sandpapered." I should say not. I think the Colonel was not
much of a teamster and had never handled the goad stick over the road
or elsewhere, as I did, else he would be more sympathetic in responses
to outcries against the "execrable shadow of a road."
Nelson Sargent, mentioned by Mr. Himes, still lives and is a respected,
truthful citizen, but he certainly did take great risks in leading
that first train of immigrants into that trap of an uncut road up
the Natchess River. The whole party narrowly escaped starvation in
the mountains and Sargent a greater risk of his neck at the hands of
indignant immigrants while in the mountains, if we may believe the
reports that came out at the time from the rescued train. However, I
never believed that Sargent intended to deceive, but was over-sanguine
and was himself deceived, and that Kirtley's failure to continue in
the field was the cause of the suffering that followed.
Allen sent 300 pounds of flour to Wenass and a courier came to Olympia,
whereupon "Old Mike Simmons," Bush, Jones, and others, forthwith
started with half a ton of flour, onions, potatoes, etc., and met them
beyond the outskirts of the settlement. All that was necessary those
days for a person to get help was to let it become known that some one
was in distress and there would always be willing hands without delay;
in fact, conditions almost approached the socialistic order of common
property as to food, by the voluntary actions of the great, big hearted
early settlers, as shown in other instances related, as well as in
this. God bless those early settlers, the real pioneers of that day.
The Indian Leschi, who we have seen contributed to the work, utilized
the road to make his escape with seventy of his people, after his
disastrous defeat at the hands of the volunteers and United States
troops in March, 1856, to cross the summit on the snow, so that after
all, in a way, he received a benefit from his liberality in times of
peace.
Two years after the opening of the road, the Hudson Bay Company sent
a train of three hundred horses loaded with furs, from the interior
country to Fort Nisqually, with a return of merchandise through the
same pass, but never repeated the experiment.
FOOTNOTE:
[16] Nisqually Plains.