USA > Idaho > History of Washington, Idaho, and Montana : 1845-1889 > Part 29
USA > Montana > History of Washington, Idaho, and Montana : 1845-1889 > Part 29
USA > Washington > History of Washington, Idaho, and Montana : 1845-1889 > Part 29
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18 In 1860-1 there were granted 17 divorces, in 1861-2 13, and in 1862-3 16. There seems to have been some connection between the gold-mining ex- citement and the desire for freedom.
275
MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE.
after renewed; but an act was passed in January 1866 declaring marriage to be a civil contract, and doubt- less intended to prevent legislative divorces, as civil contracts could only be annulled by the courts.19
Nevertheless, a bill was passed in January 1868 dissolving a marriage, which on presentation to Gov- ernor Moore was returned without approval, and the legislature declined to pass it over the veto, by a vote in the house of three to twenty-four. Subsequent efforts to revive the practice failed. This tendency to dissolve marriage ties was the more remarkable when it is remembered that the male population greatly exceeded the female, many men having taken wives from among the Indian women.20 A. S. Mercer of Seattle in 1865 made a movement to establish a social equilibrium, by importing a ship-load of unmarried women from the Atlantic states, widows and orphans of soldiers, but the influence of a single adventure of this kind was hardly perceptible.
Among the public institutions of which the terri- tory had long had need was a penitentiary, the only prison in use for felons being the county jail of Pierce county, from which escapes were of frequent occur- rence. In January 1867 congress set aside for the purpose of erecting a suitable prison the net proceeds of the internal revenue of the territory from the 30th of June, 1865, to the same date of 1868, provided the amount should not exceed twenty thousand dollars. The legislature appointed a committee to wait upon the collector to ascertain the amount due the terri- tory,21 which fell far beneath the appropriation, the
19 Wash. Stat., 1865-6, 80-85; Wash. Jour. House, 1867-8, 400.
20 Morse, in his Wash. Ter., MS., xv. 34-5, speaks of this condition of society in the Haro archipelago more particularly. Orcas Island was settled chiefly by returned Fraser River miners, who nearly all took Indian wives. As late as 1879 there were but 13 white women on that island. On Lopez Island the first white woman settled in 1869, Mrs J. L. Davis. There were more purely white families on Lopez than Orcas; San Juan had later a more nearly equal division of the sexes than the smaller islands of the group, but miscegenation prevailed to a considerable extent in all the northern settle- ments. See also Olympia Wash. Standard, Sept. 30, 1865.
21 Philip D. Moore was collector of internal revenue in 1867. He was suc- ceeded by Edward Giddings, who was born in Niagara county, New York, in
276
GOVERNMENT AND DEVELOPMENT.
grant of $20,000 being doubled before the penitentiary buildings proper were begun.22
No event could better illustrate the change which ten years had made in the condition of Washington than the abandonment in the spring of 1868 of Fort Steilacoom. So far as the natives of the Puget Sound region were concerned, their millenium had come, their eternity begun, and they would learn war no more. Contentedly they digged their little farms on the reservations, hired themselves out as farm-hands, fished, raced horses, held pot-laches,23 gathered berries for sale, or spent their trifling earnings in whiskey, which caused many, both men and women, to adorn, in the picturesque enjoyment of dolce far niente, the curb-stones and door-steps of the various towns in the vicinity of their reserves, day after day. Whiskey, as applied to the noble savage, is a wonderful civilizer. A few years of it reduces him to a subjection more complete than arms, and accomplishes in him a hu- mility which religion never can achieve. Some things some men will do for Christ, for country, for wife and children : there is nothing an Indian will not do for whiskey.
May 1822. He served several years in the office of the state controller at Albany, under Silas Wright and Millard Fillmore, coming to the Pacific coast in 1849. He returned in 1850, married, and brought out his wife, residing in California 3 years, when he removed to Puget Sound, having his home at Olympia. He was chief clerk in the surveyor-general's office from 1862 to 1865, and afterward deputy surveyor until appointed assessor of internal reve- nue. He was succeeded in that office by J. R. Hayden, but in 1875 displaced Hayden as collector of internal revenue, which position he held at the time of his death in 1876. Olympia Pac. Tribune, Feb. 26, 1875; Olympia Standard, April 29, 1876.
22 The legislature of 1869 appointed John McReavy, Fred. A. Clarke, and L. F. Thompson commissioners to select a site for a penitentiary, 'at or near Steilacoom.' The land selected was donated by John Swan and Jay Emmons Smith, a free gift to the territory of twenty-seven acres on the south-east shore of McNeil Island, about five miles by water from Steilacoom. Its situation was all that could be desired, being healthful and beautiful. The secretary of the interior, however, who had the matter in hand, would take no steps toward building until the land was deeded to the United States, and money enough placed in his hands by appropriation to complete some portion of the work, Finding that $20,000 would be insufficient, ho directed a suspension of the work until congress should move in the matter, which it would only do by being memorialized by the legislature and importuned by its delegate. The further appropriation was not made until 1873.
23 A pot-lach was a ceremonious feast held on certain occasions, when pres- ents were given.
277
THE NATIONS.
But it was not altogether, nor in the first place, the allurement of strong drink which reduced the red men to submission. Troops on one hand, and government agents with presents on the other, had accomplished the reduction; and now in 1868 there was no longer any use for the troops, and the occupation of the Indian agent would last but a few years longer. In the interim, teachers and preachers contended with the other civilizer, rum, to the salvation of some and the utter reprobation of others. In the haste and exigency of the times, and dreading an Indian war, numerous small reservations had been left here and there about the Sound, which in these ten years had come to lie at the doors of the principal towns, the temptations of which few Indians could resist. It would have been better to have banished them to the sea-coast, as in Oregon, and kept up a military guard to hold them there, than that they should mix with the foremost civilization of the day.24
24 In 1868 the war department ordered to be sold the government buildings at Gray Harbor and Fort Chehalis, erected in the autumn of 1859, when the Chehalis tribe threatened the new settlements at the mouth of the river of that name. These posts were abandoned at the breaking-out of the war of the rebellion. Ind. Aff. Rept, 1860, 187; Olympia Transcript, Feb. 22 and Dec. 26, 1868. The only military stations left in Washington in 1868 were Van- couver, T. L. Elliott in command; Colville, W. C. M. Manning in command; Camp Steele (formerly Pickett, but changed on account of Pickett's secession), Thomas Grey in command; and Cape Disappointment, R. G. Howell in com- mand. Rept of Sec. War, 1868, 40th cong. 3d sess., 742. In 1866 the head- quarters of the department of the Columbia was removed to Portland, followed soon after by the whole staff and the commissary stores. The legislature of Washington remonstrated, but headquarters remained at Portland until June 1878, when the war department ordered a return to Vancouver. The terri- torial legislature had very frequently to remind the general government of the defenceless condition of its sea-coast, as well as of danger from Indian tribes in its midst. From 1854 to 1858 congress was annually petitioned to place a man-of-war on the Northwest Coast. During the Indian wars the Decatur, Hancock, and Massachusetts did good service, and the latter was left on the Sound to watch the Indians. But she was too large and slow for that service. In 1859-60 the legislature petitioned to have the Shubrick, which first visited the Sound in July 1858, put in place of the Massachusetts, which was not granted until Victor Smith became collector in 1861, when he secured her services as revenue-cutter, in place of the Jefferson Davis, Capt. W. C. Pease, a sailing vessel which had answered that purpose from 1854 to 1861. In Dec. 1866, all war vessels having been withdrawn from the Sound, while there was a British naval station at Esquimault harbor, V. I., the pride if not the fears of the representatives of the people became alarmed, and congress was memo- rialized to 'station such a number of vessels of war upon the waters of Puget Sound as are essential to our security, as well as to convince foreign powers
278
GOVERNMENT AND DEVELOPMENT.
The political quarrels of 1867 culminated in an act of the legislature, passed in January 1868, redistrict- ing the territory, and assigning the federal judges in such a manner that Hewitt was given the county of Stevens for his district, and required to reside there; while Wyche was given Walla Walla, Yakima, Kliki- tat, Skamania, Clarke, Cowlitz, Pacific, Wahkiakum, Lewis, Mason, Thurston, and Chehalis; and the latest appointee, C. B. Darwin, was assigned to the counties of Pierce, King, Kitsap, Clallam, Whatcom, Island, and Jefferson,25 but in order to relieve Wyche, was required to hold court at Olympia for the counties of Thurston, Lewis, Chehalis, and Mason. The old war was renewed against republican measures, which had only been suppressed while the integrity of the union was in danger. Whatever the ability or want of abil- ity of Hewitt, who had held the judgeship for eight years, it was not that question that assigned him to
that the general government has the interest and honor of her most remote settlements at heart.' Wash. Stat., 1866-7, 260. At the following session congress was memorialized to erect fortifications at such points on the Sound as the war department might deem expedient.
In 1871 the following reservations were made by the government for the erection of fortifications in the future: at New Dungeness; at entrance to Squim Bay, Protection Island; on each side of the entrance to Port Discovery; at Point Wilson, including Point Hudson and Point Marrowstone at the en- trance to Port Townsend Bay; at both sides of the entrance of Deception Pass; at Admiralty Head, opposite Point Wilson; at Volcano Point, or Double Bluff, Whidbey Island; at Port Ludlow Bluff, Foulweather Bluff, and Whis- key Pit, at the entrance to Hood's canal; at Point Defiance aud Point Evans, at the Narrows. All these reservations were large enough for extensive works. Reservations were also made at Neah Bay, which was in contempla- tion for a port of refuge. Gov. mess., in Olympia Transcript, March 11, 1871. With half these fortifications the whole of Washington would he safe from invasion except through the gulf of Georgia and B. C. The above points were sclected by generals Halleck and Steele in 1866. Portland Oregonian, July 25, 1866. The matter had been under consideration a longer time. H. Ex. Doc., 65, vii., 35th cong. 2d sess. The legislature continued to petition for these fortifications, but up to 1884 none have been erected or even begun.
In 1884 the arsenal at Vancouver was closed, and the territorial arms, 478 Springfield rifles, turned over to Gov. Newell, with the ammunition.
25 The county of Quillehuyte was organized at the session of 1867-8, com- prising the territory on the coast from the mouth of the Wyatch River south- east along the Olympia range to where the 124th meridian crosscs the 48th parallel, thence south along the meridian to the north boundary of Chehalis county, and from there west to the ocean. Wash. Stat., 1867-8, 80-1. It was later included in Clallam, Jefferson, and Mason; Gideon Brownfield, John C. Brown, Aurelius Colby, John Weir, and Smith Troy were appointed county officers, showing that the coast country was becoming settled.
279
FEDERAL APPOINTMENTS.
Stevens county to hold court and reside at Fort Col- ville. The same persons who made war upon Hewitt openly declared that Darwin should be removed, as well as some other officials.26
Congress did not look with favoring eyes upon the act of the legislature heaping contumely upon the appointments of the president and senate, refusing to confirm it.27 But when Grant came to the presidency a sweeping change was made, which saved the male- contents the trouble of scheming against the old bench of judges, by the appointment of B. F. Dennison chief justice, and Orange Jacobs and James K. Ken- nedy associates,28 with A. W. Moore chief clerk, and Philip Ritz marshal.29 In 1871 Jacobs was appointed chief justice, with Rodger S. Greene and James K. Kennedy associate justices, and E. S. Kearney mar- shal. In 1872 J. R. Lewis succeeded Kennedy.30
The presidential appointments of 1869 included a new governor, Flanders, who, it was said, had in- tended to return and run again for delegate, but was prevented by the commission of executive. James Scott was appointed secretary, Colonel Samuel Ross, late commander of Fort Steilacoom, Indian superintendent,31 Elisha P. Ferry surveyor-general,
26 Although this was a political quarrel, there was another good reason for the removal of Darwin-the seduction of the wife of another official. Darwin was a scholarly judge, which Hewitt was not; but Hewitt was honest, which Darwin was not.
27 Cong. Globe, 1867-8, 3709.
28 Kennedy had been prosecuting attorney of the 3d judicial district. Olympia Pacific Tribune, March 12, 1869.
29 Ritz was an early settler of the Walla Walla Valley, where he introduced fruit culture, writing many pamphlets upon the resources of the country, and advocating the speedy construction of the Northern Pacific Railroad. He made a very valuable contribution to my Library in the form of a manuscript monograph upon the Walla Walla Valley. A town in the Spokane country is named after him.
30 Lewis had been a judge in Idaho. "He is reputed,' says the Olympia Pac. Tribune, May 14, 1872, 'to have been one of the ablest, most honorable, and incorruptible judges that have ever occupied the bench of Idaho.'
31Samuel Ross was a native of N. Y .; enlisted as a drummer-boy in the Sth inf. at 16 years of age (1837), and was brevetted a 2d lieut in 1848. Re- signing, he studied law in Ohio, and was practising in Iowa when Sumter fell. He then joined the army, was severely wounded at Chancellorsville, and was subsequently brevetted col in the regular and brig .- gen. in the volunteer service. Finally he was sent to Washington, and after his last appointment
280
GOVERNMENT AND DEVELOPMENT.
Edward Giddings32 assessor of internal revenue, Haz- ard Stevens collector, and United States district at- torney Leander Holmes.
Salucius Garfielde and Marshall F. Moore then be- came candidates for the delegateship, the former as the choice of the republicans, the latter of the demo- cratic party. Garfielde, was elected, and secured some of the ends for which he was nominated.33 Moore died in February of the following year, from the effects of old wounds received in the civil war, sincerely regretted by the people of the territory.34
The republican party, which had been in the ascend- ancy for several years, elected a republican majority to the legislature in 1869,35 but it was losing power
as Indian agent, was placed on the retired list as a brig. gen. in 1871 by the solicitation of Delegate Garfielde. Olympia Courier, June 15, 1872; Seattle despatch, in Pac. Tribune, May 17, 1872; Seattle Intelligencer, July 31, 1880. In 1875 congress reduced his rank to a colonelcy. He was accidentally drowned while bathing in Osceola Lake, near Peekskill, N. Y., July 10, ISSO. New Haven Palladium, July 13, 1880.
32 Edward Giddings was born in Niagara co., N. Y., May 20, 1822. His boyhood was spent at home, and a portion of his youth in the office of the comptroller at Albany. He came to Cal. in 1849, and to Puget Sound in 1852, residing at Olympia, where he erected the first wharf for the discharge of sea-going vessels. He was collector of internal revenue for the district of Olympia at the time of his death in April 1876. Olympia Trans., April 29, 1876. 33 Garfielde, if the testimony of both parties can be credited amid so much detraction of public men, varied his politics according to the winds of for- tune; Olympia Standard, May 8, 1869; Olympia Pac. Tribune, April 24, 1869. George B. Roberts, in his Recollections, MS., 91, says that the settlers on the lands of Puget Sound Ag. Co. elected Garfielde that he might secure them the patents to the land on which they had squatted. In a memorial to congress, passed Jan. 9, 1867, the legislature had said that at the time of settlement of Washington, American citizens believed that the treaty with Great Britian in 1846 gave the foreign companies only the lands actually enclosed and occupied at that date; and that under this belief they had entered upon, claimed, and improved, according to the donation act, the unoccupied land, unjustly claimed by those companies, and now asked that they should be secured in their homes and property by proper legislation, without being subjected to other or greater expense in obtaining patents than settlers on other parts of the public domain. Wash. Stat., 1866-7, 250-1. This was simply asking that the sovereignty of a portion of the territory still in dispute should be determined, for the welfare of all concerned; and inas- much as Garfielde contributed to this result, he was of service to the country he represented. Garfielde was appointed collector of customs in 1873.
34 See eulogy in Walla Walla Statesman, April 30, 1870.
35 The officers of the council were, William McLane president, C. B. Bagley chief-clerk, Edwin Eels enrolling clerk, C. H. Blake assistant clerk, S. W. Beall sergeant-at-arms, Daniel House door-keeper, S. H. Manu chaplain. The house organized with George H. Stewart speaker, Elwood Evans chief clerk, Charles B. Curtiss assistant clerk, Elizabeth Pecbles enrolling clerk, I. V. Mossman sergeant-at-arms, Edwin A. Stevens door-keeper. Wash. Jour. Council, 1869, 15; Wash. Standard, Oct. 9, 1869.
281
McFADDEN, FLANDERS, AND SALOMON.
by dissensions and struggles for place within itself, of which the reviving democratic party eagerly took advantage. Garfielde, who held the delegateship nearly three years, on account of a change in the time of elections 36 was not permitted to take his seat until December 1870. He served his term, and was renomi- nated by the republican party in 1872, but was beaten by O. B. McFadden, the democratic candidate,37 who since the incoming of Lincoln's administration had been living in the retirement of an ordinary law prac- tice, or serving in the legislature. He went to Wash- ington city, but was unfitted for duty by severe illness during a portion of his term, and died the year following his return. McFadden had the faults and the virtues that recommended him to his constituents, a warm heart and ready adaptability to surroundings, which was counted to him sometimes for judicial weakness. He was buried with imposing ceremonies from the house of his son-in-law, Ex-surveyor-general W. W. Miller.38
Flanders did not long retain the executive office, being succeeded in April 1870 by Edward S. Salomon of Chicago, a German Jew, lawyer by profession, and a colonel in the 82d Illinois volunteers during the civil war, where he won wounds and honors, after which the quiet and ease of Olympia life must have
36 In 1869 Senator Williams of Oregon introduced a bill in the senate, which became a law, providing that the elections for delegate to the 42d con- gress, in Washington, should be held on the first Monday in June 1870, which law left the territory without a representative in congress for the whole year following Flanders' appointment as governor. Cong. Globe, 1868-9, 1080. Another bill was introduced and passed in the spring of 1872, changing the time of election to November of that year. Olympia Pac. Tribune, May 10, 1872. These changes were said to have been made for party purposes. The Olympia Wash. Standard, March 2, 1872, charges the last one to the ‘manip- ulations' of Garfielde, 'who dreads to enter the contest with the existing division in his party.'
37 The total vote for Garfielde was 3,513; for McFadden 4,274. Although the former received a larger vote than in 1870, the democrats polled a much greater one, showing a striking change either in public sentiment or in the politics of the later accessions to the population, which is more probable.
38 Olympia Transcript, July 3, 1875; Walla Walla Union, July 3, 1875; Vancouver Register, July 2, 1875.
282
GOVERNMENT AND DEVELOPMENT.
seemed a summer holiday.39 James Scott still re- mained secretary. The officers elected " in the terri- tory now began and closed their terms in the year intermediate between the elections for delegate, the congressional and executive terms corresponding, and the legislative appointments coming between.41
On the expiration of Salomon's term he was suc- ceeded by Elisha Pyre Ferry, surveyor-general, his appointment making way for a new officer in the land department, which was filled by Lewis P. Beach, a pioneer of 1849.42 Ferry held the office of governor from April 1872 to April 1880, when William A. Newell was appointed.43
Ferry's administration was not eventful in wars " or political changes, but covered a period of active
39 Salomon and his German regiment were much commended by generals Schurz and O. O. Howard. He fought at Gettysburg and Chancellorsville. Puget Sound Express, Jan. 14, 1875; S. F. Alta, April 25, 1870.
4º The territorial officers were J. G. Sparks auditor, Hill Harmon treasurer, James Rodgers public printer, and S. H. Mann librarian. Pacific Dir., 1870, 134.
41 The president of the council in 1871 was H. A. Smith of Snohomish, chief clerk Elwood Evans, assistant clerk James M. Hayes, sergeant-at-arms R. L. Doyle, enrolling clerk Annie F. Tuck, chaplain J. R. Thompson. In the lower branch of the legislature J. J. H. Van Bokkelen was chosen speaker, W. S. Baxter chief clerk, W. Byron Daniels assistant clerk, A. B. Young enrolling clerk, D. P. Wallace sergeant-at-arms, David Helsler door-keeper. Wash. Jour. Council, 1871, 4-9.
42 Beach was from Seneca Falls, N. Y. He came to the Pacific coast in the early days of gold-mining, and to Puget Sound in 1861, where he had fol- lowed logging, printing, farming, and surveying at different times, being an industrious and able man. He died on returning from a visit to Washington city in the spring of 1873, of pleuro pneumonia. Olympia Wash. Standard, May 3, 1873.
48 W. A. Newell was a native of Franklin, Ohio, whose family removed to that state from New Jersey. He returned there and entered Rutger's college, graduating in the class with U. S. Judge Bradley and Senator Frelinghuysen, after which he studied medicine at the university of Pennsylvania, becoming accomplished in surgery. He was elected to congress in 1846, and again in 1848, and was chosen governor of New Jersey in 1856. In 1864 he was again returned to congress. He ran against George B. McClellan in 1877 for gov- ernor, but was beaten, and in 1880 President Hayes tendered him the office of governor of Washington, which he accepted. It is said of him that while in congress he originated the life-saving system now in use on the coasts of the U. S., by which many thousands of lives have been saved; and also that he made the first movement to establish an agricultural bureau. He was over 60 years of age when appointed to Washington, but hale and vigorous. Tren- ton (N. J. ) Gazette, in Olympia Wash. Standard, May 21, 1880; Puget Sound Mail, May 29, 1880; New Tacoma N. P. Coast, May 15, 1880.
" It witnessed one Indian war of brief duration in which Idaho was the sufferer. Of this I shall speak later.
283
RULE OF GOVERNOR FERRY.
growth. He reestablished civil government over the Haro archipelago in October 1872, by making it temporarily a part of the county of Whatcom, until reorganized by the legislature,45 and was a witness of the closing scenes of the Hudson Bay Company's occupation of the territory through the claims of the Puget Sound Agricultural Company.
It was during Ferry's administration, also, that the Northern Pacific Railway constructed the Puget Sound division from Kalama to New Tacoma, passing Olympia eighteen miles to the east, in resentment for which slight put upon the capital the citizens of Thurston county constructed with their own money and labor, the women of the county assisting,46 a narrow-gauge railway from Olympia to Tenino, a dis- tance of fifteen miles, which was completed and opened for travel in July 1878.
The territorial secretaries during Ferry's adminis- tration were J. C. Clements, 1872 to 1875, Henry G. Struve 47 from 1875 to 1877, and N. H. Owings48 from 1877 to 1884. Ferry's administration extended over
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