History of Washington, Idaho, and Montana : 1845-1889, Part 4

Author: Bancroft, Hubert Howe, 1832-1918; Victor, Frances Fuller, 1826-1902
Publication date: 1890
Publisher: San Francisco : History Co.
Number of Pages: 880


USA > Idaho > History of Washington, Idaho, and Montana : 1845-1889 > Part 4
USA > Montana > History of Washington, Idaho, and Montana : 1845-1889 > Part 4
USA > Washington > History of Washington, Idaho, and Montana : 1845-1889 > Part 4


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All at once this wholesome plodding was inter- rupted by the news of the gold discovery in Califor- nia, and every man who could do so set off at once for the gold-fields. They made flat-boats and floated their loaded wagons down the Cowlitz River to where the old Hudson's Bay Company's trail left it, drove their ox-teams to the Columbia River opposite St Helen, and again taking the trail from the old Mc- Kay farın, which the Lees had travelled in 1834, emerged on the Tualatin plains, keeping on the west side of the Willamette to the head of the valley. They here came into the southern immigrant road, which they followed to its junction with the Lassen trail to the Sacramento Valley, where they arrived late in the autumn, having performed this remarkable journey without accident.29


28 In July 1858 he married Ellen Horan. Olympia Pioneer and Dem., July 30, 1858.


2" See Hist. Or., ii. 45, this series. Also Rabbeson's Growth of Towns, MS., 11-12; Hancock's Thirteen Years, MS., 105-17. Sylvester, who with Rab- beson, Ferguson, and Borst went to California in the spring of 1849, describes the route as I have given it. His company had one wagon and 4 yokes of oxen; and there were three other wagons in the train. They started in April and reached Sacramento in July. Olympia, MS., 13-15.


13


GOLD AND INDIANS.


The rush to the mines had the same temporary effect upon the improvement of the country north of the Columbia that I have noticed in my account of the gold excitement in the Willamette Valley. Farm- ing, building, and all other industries were suspended, while for about two years the working population of the country were absent in search of gold. This inter- ruption to the steady and healthy growth which had begun has been much lamented by some writers,80 with what justice I am unable to perceive; because although the country stood still in respect to agricul- ture and the ordinary pursuits of a new and small population, this loss was more than made up by the commercial prosperity which the rapid settlement of the Pacific coast bestowed upon the whole of the Ore- gon territory, and especially upon Puget Sound, which without the excitement of the gold discovery must have been twenty years in gaining the milling and other improvements it now gained in three.


In the mean time, and before these results became apparent, the settlements on the Sound were threat- ened with a more serious check by the Snoqualimichs, who about the first of May attacked Fort Nisqually with the intention of taking it, and if they had suc- ceeded in this, Patkanim's plans for the extermination of the white people would have been carried out. In this affair Leander C. Wallace was killed, and two other Americans, Walker and Lewis, wounded, the latter surviving but a short time. For this crime Quallawort, a brother of Patkanim, and Kassass, another Snoqualimich chief, suffered death by hang- ing, as related in a previous volume.31 This was a somewhat different termination from that anticipated. Patkanim, even after the Snoqualimichs were re-


30 Evans says, in his Hist. Mem. 16, that 'the exodus in search of geld was a grievous check, and that years of sober advancement and industry were re- quired to recuperate from its consequences.' I have mentioned in my history of Oregon that other writers take the same view.


31 Hist. Or., ii. 67-8, 80.


14


THE FIRST SETTLEMENTS.


pulsed, sent word to the American settlers that they would be permitted to quit the country by leaving their property. To this they answered that they had come to stay, and immediately erected block- houses at Tumwater and Skookum Chuck. This decided movement, with the friendship of the Indians on the upper part of the Sound, and the prompt measures of Governor Lane, who arrived March 2d at Oregon City, followed by the establishment of Fort Steilacoom about the middle of July, crushed an incipient Indian war.32


The outbreak did not seriously interrupt the dawn- ing fortunes of the settlers, who were scrupulously careful to prevent any difficulties with the natives by a custom of uniform prices for labor and goods, and perfect equity in dealing with them.33


Owing to the California exodus, the year 1849 was remarkable only for its dearth of immigration.


32 Writers on this attack on Nisqually have laid too little stress on Pat- kanim's designs. Taken in connection with the proceedings of the previous summer at Whidbey Island, the intention seems clear; the quarrel with the Nisquallies was but a pretence to account for the appearance at the fort of the Snoqualimichs in their war-paint. The killing of the Americans was but an incident, as they could not have known that they should incet a party of the settlers there. The plan was to capture the fort and the supply of ammunition, after which it would have been quite easy to make an end of the settlements, already deprived by the exodus to California of a large share of their fighting material. The H. B. Co., confident of their influence with the Indians, either did not suspect or did not like to admit that the Snoqua- limichs intended mischief to them, though Tolmie confesses that when he went outside the fort to bring in Wallace's body he was aimed at; but the person was prevented firing by a Sinahomish Indian present, who reproved him, saying, 'Harm enough done for one day.' Tolmie's Puget Sound, MS. 35. All accounts agree that Patkanim was inside the fort when the firing by the Suoqualimichs was commenced, and that it began when a gun was discharged inside the fort to clean it. May not this have been the precon- certed signal? But the closing of the gates with the chief inside, and the firing from the bastion, disconcerted the conspirators, who retreated to cover.


33 Evans mentions in his Ilist. Mem., 12, that Patterson, an immigrant of 1847, who afterward left the country, became indebted to an Indian for bringing his family up the Cowlitz River, but could not pay him, and gave his note for 12 months. At the end of the year the Indian came to claim his pay, but still the man had not the money, on learning which the Indian offered to take a heifer, which offer was declined. The Indian then went to the white set- tlement at Tumwater and entered his complaint, when a meeting was called and a committee appointed to return with him to the house of the debtor, who was compelled to deliver up the heifer. This satisfied the creditor and kept the peace.


15


BACK FROM THE MINES.


But by the end of the year most of the gold-hunters were back on their claims, somewhat richer than before in the product of the mines. Early in January 1850 there arrived the first American merchant vessel to visit the Sound since its settlement. This was the brig Orbit, William H. Dunham master, from Calais, Maine. She had brought a company of adventurers to California, who having no further use for her, sold her for a few thousand dollars to four men, who thought this a good investment, and a means of get- ting to Puget Sound. Their names were I. N. Ebey, B. F. Shaw, Edmund Sylvester, and one Jackson. There came as passenger also Charles Hart Smith, a young man from Maine and a friend of Captain Dun- ham. M. T. Simmons, who had not gone to the mines, had sold, in the autumn of 1849, his laud claim at Tum- water, with the mills, to Crosby 34 and Gray, formerly of Portland, for thirty-five thousand dollars. With a portion of this money he purchased a controlling interest in the Orbit, and taking C. H. Smith as part- ner, sent the brig back to San Francisco with a cargo of piles, with Smith as supercargo, to dispose of them and purchase a stock of general merchandise. The vessel returned in July, and the goods were opened at Smithfield, which by the death of Smith 35 had come to


34 Captain Clanrick Crosby was a navigator, and first saw the waters of Puget Sound in command of a ship. He continued to reside at Tumwater down to the time of his death, Oct. 29, 1879, at the age of 75 years. His wife, Phobe H., died Nov. 25, 1871. Their children are Clanrick, Jr, William, Walter, Fanny, Mrs George D. Biles, and Mrs J. H. Naylor. New Tacoma Herald, Oct. 30, 1879. Crosby was speaker of the house of representatives in 1864. Bancroft's Hand-book, 1864, 353.


83 Levi Lathrop Smith was born in the state of New York, and studied for the presbyterian ministry; but migrating to Wisconsin, became there attached to a half-caste girl, a catholic. To marry under these circumstances would be a violation of rule, and he made another to remove to Oregon. But his health was affected, and he suffered with epilepsy. He was elected to the Oregon legislature in 1848, but did not live to take his seat, being drowned in the latter part of August while going from his claim to Tumwater, attacked, it was supposed, by convulsions, which overturned his canoe. He built the first cabin in what is now the city of Olympia, on Main Street, half- way between Second and Third streets, a cabin 16 feet square, of split cedar, with a stone fire-place, a stick chimney, and roofed with four-feet shingles held on with weight-poles. The cabin had one door, and three panes of glass for a window; a rough puncheon floor, and a rough partition dividing off a bedroom and closet. The furniture consisted of a bedstead, made by boring


16


THE FIRST SETTLEMENTS.


be the sole property of Sylvester, and was now called Olympia, at the suggestion of I. N. Ebey.36 Sylvester's claim on the prairie was abandoned when he took pos- session of the claim on the Sound,37 and was taken by Captain Dunham of the Orbit, who was killed by being thrown from his horse 39 July 4, 1851, the government reserving the land for his heirs, who long after took possession.


In order to give his town a start, Sylvester offered to give Simmons two lots for business purposes, which were accepted; and a house of rough boards, two stories high-its ground dimensions twenty feet front by forty in depth-was erected at the corner of First and Main streets, and the cargo of the Orbit displayed for sale,39 Smith acting as clerk. The firm


holes in the upright planking and inserting sticks to support the bed, two tables, some benches, and stools of domestic manufacture. The furniture of the table was tin, and scanty at that. Two acres of land were enclosed, in which corn, beans, pumpkins, squashes, potatoes, pease, turnips, cabbages, melons, cucumbers, beets, parsnips, carrots, onions, tomatoes, radishes, lettuce, parsley, sweet fennel, peppergrass, summer-savory, and sunflowers were culti- vated. The live-stock belonging to this establishment comprised 5 hogs, 3 pigs, 7 hens, a cock, a cat and dog, a yoke of oxen, and a pair of horses. These de- taiis are taken from a humorous document supposed to have been written by Smith himself, still in the possession of a gentleman of Olympia. As a picture of pioneer life, it is not without value. A diary kept by Smith has also been preserved, in which appear many hints of his sad and solitary mus- ings upon his life in the wilderness and his disappointed hopes. Evans' Hist. Notes, 4.


36 Evans' Historical Notes, a collection of authorities on the early settle- ments, with remarks by Evans, gives Ebey as the author. Sylvester says, speaking of Ebey, 'We got the name from the Olympic range;' from which I have no doubt Evans is correct. The town was surveyed by William L. Frazer in 1850; and afterward by H. A. Goldsborough, who, it will be remem- bered, remained in the territory when the U. S. steamer Massachusetts sailed away in the spring of 1850. Hist. Or., ii., chap. ix., this series.


31 Sylvester, in his Olympia, MS., does not mention L. L. Smith, but speaks only of himself, and gives the impression that he alone settled at Olympia in 1846. This evasion of a fact puzzled me until I came upon the explanation in Evans' Hist. Notes, 2, where he mentions Sylvester's reticence in the matter of Smith, and tells us that it arose from an apprehension that Smith's heirs might some time lay claim to the town site and disturb the title. This fear Evans declares to be groundless, and that Sylvester 'lawfully survived to the sole ownership of Smith's claim,' by the partnership clause of the Oregon land law.


38 Swan, in Olympia Club, MS., 6.


39 The Orbit, being of little or no use to her owners, Simmons having sold his mills, was taken to the Columbia by Captain Butler for her owners in the summer of 1851. She got into the breakers on the bar and was aban- doned. The tide returning floated her into Baker Bay in safety. Some per- sons who beheld her drifting took her to Astoria and claimed salvage; but


.


17


COMMERCIAL BEGINNINGS.


had a profitable trade, as we may well believe when cooking-stoves without furniture sold for eighty dol- lars.40 American commerce was thus begun with a population of not more than one hundred citizens of the United States in the region immediately about Puget Sound.41 Three of the crew of the British ship Albion settled in the region of Steilacoom; namely, William Bolton, Frederick Rabjohn, and William Elders. If it is true, as I have shown in a previous volume, 42 that the Americans, as soon as they were armed with the power by congress, exhibited a most unfriendly exclusiveness toward the British com- pany which had fostered them in its way, it is easy to perceive that they were actuated partly by a feel- ing of revenge, and a desire for retaliation for having been compelled to show the rents in their breeches as a reason for requiring a new pair,43 and to account for the rents besides, to prove that the Indian trade had not been interfered with. Now these irrepressible Americans were bringing their own goods by the ship-load, and peddling them about the Sound in canoes under the noses of the company. It was cer- tainly an nnequal contest when legal impediment was removed.


Simmons brought her back to the Sound, where she was finally sold at mar- shal's sale, and purchased by a company consisting of John M. Swan, H. A. Goldsborough, and others, who loaded her with piles and undertook to navi- gate her to the S. I. They met with a gale in Fuca Straits and had their rigging blown to picces, but managed to get into Esquimault harbor, where they sold the vessel to the H. B. Co. for $1,000. The company refitted her, changed her name to the Discovery, and used her on the northern coast nntil 1858, when she was employed as a police vessel on Fraser River in collecting licenses. Afterward she was resold to Leonard, of the firm of Leonard & Green of Portland, and her name of Orbit restored; she was taken to China and again sold, where she disappears from history. She is remembered as the first American vessel that ever penetrated to the head of Puget Sound, or en- gaged in a commerce with Americans on its waters. Olympia Club, MS., 2-8. 40 Rabbeson, in Olympia Club, MS., 3.


4] Rabbeson says that in the winter of 1849 or spring of 1850, at the time the British ship Albion was lying at Dungeness cutting spars, he went down to that port with Eaton and others, and in returning he fell in with an Amer- ican vessel coming np for piles, which he piloted to the upper sound, securing the contract for furnishing the cargo. He thinks her name was The Pleiades, and the next vessel in the sound the Robert Bowen. Growth of Towns, MS., 14. 42 Hist. Or., ii., 104-6, this series.


#3 Sylvester's Olympia, MS., 12. HIST. WASH .- 2


18


THE FIRST SETTLEMENTS.


In the Orbit came John M. Swan,44 who in 1850 settled on a claim immediately east of Olympia, which became Swantown. Another passenger was Henry . Murray, who took a claim east of Steilacoom. In July Lafayette Balch, owner of the brig George Emory, arrived at Olympia with a cargo of goods, which he unloaded at that place; but finding he could not get such terms as he desired from the owner of the town lots, he put his vessel about and went down the Sound, establishing the town of Port Steilacoom, putting up a large business house, the frame of which he brought from San Francisco, and to which he removed the goods left at Olympia to be sold by Henry C. Wilson,45 who appears to have arrived with Balch, and who settled on the west shore of Port Townsend on the 15th of August. On the 15th of October I. N. Ebey took up the claim from which Glasgow had been ejected by the Indians on the west side of Whidbey Island, about a mile south of Penn Cove. R. H. Lansdale about the same time took a claim at the head of Penn Cove, where the town of Coveland was ultimately laid out. In November the George Emory, which had made a voyage to San Francisco, brought up as passengers half a dozen men who in- tended getting out a cargo of piles for that market, and who landed five miles north of Steilacoom. One of their number, William B. Wilton, selecting a claim, built a cabin, and the adventurers went to work with a will to make their fortunes. Their only neighbor


"I do not know Swan's antecedents, except that he was in the mines in April 1849, and that after working there for three months he became ill, and determined to go north as soon as he could get away, for his health. Find- ing the Orbit about to sail, he took passage in her. His idea was to go to V. I., but when he arrived at Victoria he found the terms of colonization there repulsive to him, and went on with the vessel to the head of Puget Sound, where he remained. Swan's Colonization, MS., 2.


45 Wash. Sketches, MS., 38-9; Sylvester's Olympia, MS., 19-20; Swan's Colonization, MS., 4-5. Wilson married Susan P. Keller in Oct. 1854. She was a daughter of Captain Josiah P. Keller of Maine, who settled at Port Gamble, or Teekalet Bay, in the autumn of 1853, with his family. He was born in 1812, and emigrated to Puget Sound from Boston. He was a useful and respected citizen, being the founder of the village of Teekalet. His death occurred June 11, 1862, at Victoria. Port Townsend Northwest, June 1862.


19


PORT TOWNSEND.


was William Bolton, who could not have been very well supplied with the requirements for a life in the woods, as they were unable to obtain oxen to drag the fallen timber to the water's edge, and in April 1851 abandoned their enterprise, after disposing of as much of the timber they had felled as could be loaded on a vessel without the aid of oxen. Two of their number, Charles C. Bachelder and A. A. Plum- mer,46 then went to Port Townsend, and took claims on Point Hudson, about a mile north-west of Wilson, where they were joined in November by L. B. Has- tings and F. W. Pettygrove, formerly of Oregon City and Portland, who had ruined himself by speculating in property at Benicia, California. In February, J. G. Clinger47 and Pettygrove and Hastings took claims adjoining those of Bachelder and Plummer on the north and west, and soon these four agreed to lay out a town, and to devote a third of each of their claims to town-site purposes-a fair division, considering the relative size and location of the claims. Bachelder and Plummer, being unmarried, could take no more than a quarter-section under the Oregon land law, which granted but 160 acres as a donation when such elaim was taken after the 1st of December, 1850, or by a person who was not a resi- dent of Oregon previous to that time. Pettygrove and Hastings,48 having both emigrated to the territory


46 Plummer was a native of Maine. He was a saddler in the quartermas- ter's department under Parker H. French on the march to El Paso of the 3d infantry in 1849. From El Paso he went to Mazatlan, and thence by the bark Phoenix to San Francisco in May 1850. In the spring of 1851 he took passage on the George Emory, Capt. Balch, for Puget Sound. Wash. Sketches, MS., 37; see also Solano Co. Hist., 157.


47 Pettygrove and Hastings arrived in the schooner Mary Taylor, from Portland. Plummer, in Wash. Sketches, MS., a collection of statements taken down by my short-hand reporter, says that into his cabin, 15 by 30 feet, were crowded for a time the families of Pettygrove, Hastings, and Clinger. Houses were erected as soon as they conveniently could be on the claims taken by these settlers, and could not have been ready much before spring.


18 Briggs, in his Port Townsend, MS., containing a history of the immigra- tion of 1847, early Oregon matters, and an account of the settlement of Port Townsend, says that Hastings was in his company crossing the plains. Briggs settled on the Santiam, where Hastings paid him a visit, persuading him to go to Puget Sound. Hastings and Pettygrove then went over to look for a location, and fixed upon Port Townsend.


20


THE FIRST SETTLEMENTS.


previous to 1850, and being married, were entitled to take a whole section, but their land, being less favor- ably situated for a town site, was worth less to the company; hence the terms of the agreement.


The new town was named after the bay upon which it was situated, Port Townsend, and the owners con- stituted a firm for the prosecution of trade.49


As timber was the chief marketable product of the country, and as Hastings and Pettygrove were owners of three yokes of oxen, the company at once set to work cutting piles and squaring timbers; at which labor they continued for about two years, loading sev- eral vessels,50 and carrying on a general merchandise business besides. 51


In May 1852 Albert Briggs settled a mile and a half south from Port Townsend,52 and in September came Thomas M. Hammond, who took a narrow strip of land west of the claims of Hastings and Wilson, and which, coming down to the bay, adjoined Briggs on the north.58 The names of all the donation-land


49 In the agreement between the partners, says Briggs, $3,000 was to be put into a joint stock to carry on merchandising and a fishery, neither part- ner to draw out more than the net income according to their share; but at the end of three years the original stock might be drawn from the concern. A condition was imposed, on account of habits of intemperance on the part of Bachelder and Pettygreve, that if any member of the firm should be declared incompetent by a vote of the others to attend to business en account of drink, he should forfeit his interest and quit the company. Bachelder lost his share by this agreement, receiving a few hundred dollars fer his land from Petty- grove. He died at Port Ludlew net long after. Id., 24-5.


50 The brig Wellingsley several times, brig James Marshall once, ship Tal- mer once, and bark Mary Adams once. Plummer, in Wash. Sketches, MS., 40. 51 The first house erected in Port Townsend after Plummer's was by R. M. Caines, for a hotel on Water Street, later occupied as the Argus newspaper office. Then fellowed residences by Wilson, J. G. Clinger, who had taken a land claim a mile and a half seuth of the town, Benjamin Ress, who with his brother R. W. Ross had lecated land frenting on the Fuca sea at the head of the strait, William Webster, John Price, and E. S. Fewler, who had a stock of merchandisc. Plnmmer, in Wash. Sketchers, MS., 40-1. Mrs Clinger was the mother of the first white child born in Port Townsend.


52 Briggs was born in Vt. He arrived in Or. in 1847 with the immigration, in company with Let Whitcomb, and worked at his trade of carpenter for a ycar or more, settling at last on the Santiam, where he remained until 18.52, when he went to the Sound on the solicitatien of his friend Hastings. He brought his family, and built, according to his own statement, the first frame honse and brick chimney at er near Pert Townsend, and brought the first herses and cattle to the place. Port Townsend, MS., 1, 35.


63 Hammond was a native of Ireland, born about 1820, arrived in the U. S. in 1829, and came to Cal. in 1843 with the gold-seekers. J. B. Beidelman


21


LOW AND TERRY.


claimants about Port Townsend are here mentioned in my account of its settlements.


In the latter part of August 1851, in the van of the immigration, arrived at Portland John N. Low and C. C. Terry. In September they took their cattle and whatever live-stock they possessed down the Columbia, and by the Hudson's Bay Company's trail to the valley of the Chehalis, where they were left, while Low 54 and Terry proceeded to the Sound to explore for a town site, fixing at last upon Alki Point, on the west side of Elliott Bay, where a claim was taken about the 25th, and a house partially con- structed of logs. They found that others were pre- paring to settle in the vicinity, and were encouraged. John C. Holgate, a young man and an immigrant of 1847, who had served in the Cayuse war, had visited the east side of Elliott Bay in 1850, selecting a claim for himself.55


Previous to the arrival of Low and Terry at Alki Point, Luther M. Collins took a claim in the valley of the Dwamish or White River,56 and before they


& Co. of San Francisco wished him to start a fishery and cut piles for that market. He took passage on the bark Powhatan, Captain Mellen, for Puget Sound, but by the time he was ready to begin business the firm had failed, and Hammond cast in his lot with the settlers of Port Townsend. Wash. Sketches, MS., 95-7.




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