USA > Idaho > History of Washington, Idaho, and Montana : 1845-1889 > Part 7
USA > Montana > History of Washington, Idaho, and Montana : 1845-1889 > Part 7
USA > Washington > History of Washington, Idaho, and Montana : 1845-1889 > Part 7
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41
A PROTEST OF AMERICANS.
did not even know where to find the lands located in their names, but who were compelled to agree to con- vey these lands to the company when their title should have been completed.
They declared that they as American citizens had a regard for treaty stipulations and national honor, and were jealous of any infringement of the laws of the country by persons who had no interest in the glory or prosperity of the government, but were for- eign-born and owed allegiance alone to Great Britain. They warned the company that it had never been the policy of the United States to grant pre-emption rights to other than American citizens, or those who had declared their intention to become such in a legal form, and that such would without doubt be the con- ditions of land grants in the expected donation law.
They declared they viewed the claims and improve- ments made subsequent to the treaty by the Puget Sound Agricultural Company as giving them no rights; and as to their previous rights, they were only possessory, and the United States had never parted with the actual title to the lands occupied, but that any American citizen might appropriate the land to himself, with the improvements, and that the claims held by the servants of the company would not be respected unless the nominal settlers became settlers in fact and American citizens.1
Within the week allowed the company to withdraw their cattle from the Nisqually plains they had with- drawn them, and there was no trouble from that source. The threat implied in the resolutions, to sustain any American citizen in appropriating the lands claimed by the company and not by individuals who had re- nounced allegiance to Great Britain, together with the improvements, was carried out to the letter during the
1 Or. Spectator, Jan. 11, 1849. I. N. Ebey is said by Rabbeson to have draughted the resolutions, though Rabbeson was chairman of the committee, aud S. B. Crockett the third member. He knew of the long feud between certain of his countrymen and the Hudson's Bay Company, and without know- ing the merits of the case on either side, was prepared in any event to be strongly American.
42
POLITICS AND DEVELOPMENT.
following twelve years, their lands being covered with squatters, and the products of the Cowlitz farm taken away without leave or compensation,? not by the men who composed this meeting, but by others who adopted these views of the company's rights.
The land laid claim to by the agricultural company, in their memorial to the joint commission provided for by the convention between the United States and Great Britain March 5, 1864, was "the tract of
2 Geerge B. Roberts, in his Recollections, MS., 89, 91, 94, speaks very feel- ingly of what he was compelled to suffer from 1846 to 1871, by reason of his membership and agency of the company at the Cowlitz farm. 'The fortunes of the company were upon the fast ebb,' he says, 'and rather than go north, or elsewhere, I thought I had better settle as a farmer on the Newaukum. I made out very poorly as a settler, and when Stevens' war broke out, I left my family and went for a short time as mail-guard, but was soen employed as a clerk to Gen. Miller, quartermaster-general of velunteers ... In the Fraser River excitement of 1858, I went to Victoria and arranged with Tolmie, then agent of the P. S. A. A., to carry on the Cowlitz farm on a small scale for my own benefit; but I was to keep the buildings in repair and the farm at its then size until some action was had with the government. I took pos- session unepposed, and all went well until my hay was put up in cocks, when here came a lot of fellows, armed with rifles, and carried it all off. One of these squatters was the justice; so my lawyer, Elwood Evans, recommended chang- ing the venue. The jury decided that they knew nothing of treaties, and of course I had all the expense to bear. The company said the crops were mine, and they would have nothing to do with it. Then fellowed the burning of a large barn, etc., poor Kendall's letter and murder, then injunction and disso- lution, the loss of papers by the judge when the time of trial camne, so as net te pronounce, and so this matter went from 1859 to 1871 ... The judge was a federal appeintee, and in theory independent, but liable to be unseated at any time and returned to the peeple whem he had offended. .. I could net with any grace relinquish the property entrusted to my care, te say nothing of the squatters rendering me too poer to leave. Whether the company frem any sinister motives helped these troubles I know not. I leave to yeur imagina- tien the state I was kept in, and my family; sometimes my windows at night were riddled with shot, my fences set open, and in dry weather set on fire. It was an immense effort to unseat me, and cheat the government ef these lands, and all the clamor against the P. S. A. A. was for nothing else ... The P. S. A. A. one year paid Pierce county $7,000 in taxes, but it is likely the company was astute enough to do so with the view of the record showing the value of their preperty at that time. In 1870 or 1871 Salucius Garfielde succeeded in getting donatien claims for the "hardy pioneers." Well, I always thought a pioneer was a person who hewed out a farm, not one who vielently took possession of a beautiful property that had been carefully, not to say scientifically, farmed for over thirty years.' This shows to what acts the sentiment adopted by the early settlers teward the Puget Sound Cem- pany influenced rude and unscrupulous or ignorant and prejudiced men; and also the injustice inflicted upon individuals by the carrying-out of their views. Fer the previous biegraphy of G. B. Roberts, see Ifist. Or., i. 38-9, this scries. He finally settled at Cathlamet, where he kept a store, and held the offices of prebate judge, treasurer, and deputy auditor of Wahkiakum county. He died in the spring of 1883, and his wife, Rese Birnie, a year or two earlier. See note on p. 111 of vol ii., Ilist. Or.
43
THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY.
land at Nisqually, extending along the shores of Puget Sound from the Nisqually River on one side to the Puyallup River on the other, and back to the Cascade Range, containing not less than 261 square miles, or 167,040 acres," with "the land and farm at the Cowlitz consisting of 3,572 acres, more or less,"3 which they proposed to sell back to the United States together with the Hudson's Bay Company's lands, and the improvements and live-stock of both companies, for the sum of five million dollars. They received for such claims as were allowed $750,- 000. That the sum paid for the blunder of the government in agreeing to confirm to these companies their claims without any definite boundary was no greater, was owing to the persistent effort of the settlers of Washington to diminish their possessions.4 Another specimen of the temper of the early settlers was shown when the president and senate of the United States sent them a federal judge in the person of William Strong. They refused, as jurors, to be bidden by him, "in the manner of slave-driving," to repair to the house of John R. Jackson to hold court, when the county commissioners had fixed the county seat at Sidney S. Ford's claim on the Chehalis, at which place they held an indignation meeting in October 1851, M. T. Simmons in the chair.5
When the Hudson's Bay Company in 1845 made a compact with the provisional government of Oregon to give it their support on certain conditions, there existed no county organization north of the Columbia River, except as the counties or districts of Tualatin and Clackamas extended northward to the boundary of the Oregon territory, declared by the legislature
3 New Tacoma North Pacific Coast, June 15, 1880, 180.
4 At a meeting held at Steilacoom in May 1851, it is stated that Tolmie as the company's agent had diminished their claim to 144 square miles, after the passage of the land law, but that he was using every means to drive settlers off that tract, with what success I need not say. Or. Spectator, June 5, 1851.
6 See Hist. Or., ii. 162, this series.
44
POLITICS AND DEVELOPMENT.
of 1844 to be at the parallel of 54° 40', when, as no. American citizens resided north of the Columbia at that time, no administration of colonial law had ever been necessary; but on the compact going into effect, and Americans settling in the region of Puget Sound, the district of Vancouver was created north of the Columbia, and officers appointed as follows: James Douglas, M. T. Simmons, and Charles Forrest dis- trict judges, and John R. Jackson sheriff.6
On the 19th of December 1845 the county of Lewis was created "out of all that territory lying north of the Columbia River and west of the Cowlitz, up to 54° and 40' north latitude," and was entitled to elect the same officers as other counties, except that the sheriff of Vancouver county was required to assess and collect the revenue for both districts for the year 1846. No county officers were appointed, but the choice of judges and a representative was left to the people at the annual election in 1846, when W. F. Tolmie was chosen to represent in the legislature Lewis county, and Henry N. Peers7 Vancouver county, while the privilege8 of electing judges was not regarded.
Dugald McTavish, Richard Covington, and Rich- ard Lane, all Hudson's Bay Company men, were ap- pointed judges of Vancouver district to fill vacancies, but no appointments were made in Lewis county. At the session of 1846 a change was made, requiring the people to elect their county judges or justices of the peace for the term of two years, at the annual election. Under this law, in 1847 Vancouver county
6 The legislature of August 1845 established a bench of county judges to hold office one, two, and three years, and the same body in the following December made the three years' judge president of the district court of his district. Or. Laws, 1843-9, 32-3. Douglas was president of the district court of Vancouver; Simmons held office two years and Forrest one year.
7 Peers was a talented young man of the H. B. Co., a good versifier, and fair legislator.
8 This was simply a privilege granted by resolution of the legislature of 1845, these officers being appointed by that body, and vacancies filled by tho governor until December 1846, when an net was passed providing for the election of judges and other county officers. Or. Spectator, Jan. 21, 1847.
45
LEWIS AND VANCOUVER COUNTIES.
elected Richard Lane, R. R. Thompson, and John White, one man of the fur company and two Ameri- cans, justices of the peace, and Henry N. Peers rep- resentative; while Lewis countyelected Jacob Wooley, S. B. Crockett, and John R. Jackson justices,9 and Simon Plomondon, Canadian, for representative. Vancouver county elected William Bryan sheriff and assessor, Adolphus Lee Lewis treasurer, and R. Covington county clerk; Lewis county elected M. Brock assessor, James Birnie treasurer, and Alonzo M. Poe sheriff.1º The vote of Lewis county at this election gave Abernethy the majority for governor, which he did not have south of the Columbia.
In 1848 Lewis county was not represented, the member elect, Levi Lathrop Smith, whose biography I give elsewhere, having been drowned; Vancouver county was represented by A. Lee Lewis. Little legislation of any kind was effected, on account of the absence of so large a part of the population in Cali- fornia. For the same reason, the only general news- paper in the territory, the Oregon Spectator, was suspended during several months of 1849, covering the important period of the erection of a territorial government under the laws of the United States by Joseph Lane, appointed governor of Oregon by Pres- ident Polk, and on its resuming publication it gave but briefly election and legislative news. From this meagre statement, it appears, however, that the ap- portionment of representatives under the new order of things allowed one joint member for each branch of the legislature for Lewis, Vancouver, and Clatsop counties, Samuel T. McKean of the latter in the council, and M. T. Simmons of Lewis in the lower house.11 The territory having been laid off into
9 Simmons must have acted as judge of Lewis county previous to this, though appointed for Vancouver, for the marriage of Daniel D. Kinsey and Ruth Brock was solemnized in July 1847 by 'Judge ' Simmons. Evans' Ifist. Notes, 9.
10 Or. Spectator, July 22, 1847.
11 Id., Oct. 18, 1849.
46
POLITICS AND DEVELOPMENT.
three judicial districts, Lewis county being in the third, the first territorial legislature passed an act attaching it to the first district, in order that the judge of that district, Bryant, the other judges be- ing absent, might repair to Steilacoom and try the Snoqualimich who had shot two Americans at Nis- qually in the March previous, which was done, as I have fully related elsewhere;12 this being the first court of which there is any record in Lewis county, and the first United States court north of the Columbia.
The member from the north side of the Columbia was absent from the long term held after the adjourn- ment in July; and as McKean was more interested in Clatsop than Lewis or Vancouver, the settlers of the latter counties felt themselves but poorly repre- sented, the most important act concerning their divis- ion of the territory being the change of name of Van- couver to Clarke county.13 In the following year they were in no better case, although they elected for the first time a full set of county officers. McKean was still their councilman, and another member from Clatsop their assemblyman, Truman P. Powers, a good and true man, but knowing nothing about the wants of any but his own immediate locality. How- ever, by dint of lobbying, a new county was created at this session out of the strip of country bordering on Shoalwater Bay and the estuary of the Columbia; and in 1851 the three counties north of the river were able to elect a councilman, Columbia Lancaster, and a representative, D. F. Brownfield, in whom they put their trust as Americans. Alas, for human expecta- tions! Both of these men, instead of attending to the needs of their constituents, entered into a squabble over the location of the seat of government, and with idiotic obstinacy remained staring at empty benches in Oregon City with three other dunces for two weeks, when they returned to their homes.
12 Ilist. Or., ii. 79-80, this series.
18 Or. Jour. Council, 1849, 69.
47
CHAPMAN'S SCHEME.
Now, the people south of the Columbia, whose rep- resentatives were ever on the alert to secure some benefits to their own districts, were not to be blamed for the state of affairs I have indicated in the remote region of Puget Sound, or for not embodying in their frequent memorials to congress the wants and wishes, never properly expressed in the legislative assembly. But with that ready jealousy the people ever feel of the strong, they held the territorial legislature guilty of asking everything for the Willamette Valley and nothing for Puget Sound. This feeling prepared their minds for the development of a scheme for a new territory, which was first voiced by J. B. Chapman, a lawyer, the founder of Chehalis City,14 a trading politician and promoter of factions. He had lived in Oregon City or Portland, but conceived the idea of enlarging his field of operations, and in the winter of 1850-1 explored north of the Columbia for a proper field. On the 17th of February, 1851, he wrote to A. A. Durham of Oswego, on the Willamette, that he found "the fairest and best portion of Oregon north of the Columbia," and that no doubt it must and would be a separate territory and state from that of the south. "The north," he said, "must be Columbia Territory and the south the State of Oregon. How poetical !- from Maine to Columbia; and how mean- ing of space!" 15 The letter was signed 'Carman and Chapman,' but no one ever heard of Carman, and Evans, who made special inquiry, thinks he was a myth.
Chehalis City being too remote, and wanting in population for the centre of Chapman's designs, he re- moved soon after to the Sound, where he attempted to establish Steilacoom City, adjoining the Port Steil- acoom of Balch, but failed to secure his object of sup-
14 J. B. Chapman also located a paper town on the upper Chehalis, which he called Charleston, but which never had a real existence. Evans' Division of the Territory, i., being a collection of printed matter on the subject, with notes by Elwood Evans.
15 Or. Spectator, April 10, 1851; Olympia Standard, April 28, 1868; Evans' Division of Territory.
48
POLITICS AND DEVELOPMENT.
planting the latter. In politics he was more success- ful, because he contrived to assume the distinction of originating the idea which he had only borrowed from those who were nursing their wrath over wrongs, and of anticipating a contemplated movement by getting it into print over his signature.
The first real movement made in the direction of a new territory was on the 4th of July, 1851, when the Americans about the head of the Sound met at Olym- pia to celebrate the nation's birthday. Chapman, being, as he asserts, the only lawyer among them, was chosen orator of the occasion, and in his speech re- ferred to "the future state of Columbia" with an en- thusiasm which delighted his hearers. After the ceremonies of the day were over, a meeting was held for the purpose of organizing for the effort to procure a separate government for the country north of the Columbia, Clanrick Crosby, the purchaser of the Tum- water property of M. T. Simmons, being chairman of the meeting, and A. M. Poe secretary. The meeting was addressed by I. N. Ebey, J. B. Chapman, C. Crosby, and H. A. Goldsborough.16 A committee on resolutions was appointed, consisting of Ebey, Golds- borough, Wilson, Chapman, Simmons, Chambers, and Crockett. The committee recommended a convention of representatives from all the election precincts north of the Columbia, to be held at Cowlitz landing on the 29th of August, the object of which was to "take into careful consideration the present peculiar position of the northern portion of the territory, its wants, the best method of supplying those wants, and the pro- priety of an early appeal to congress for a division of the territory."
16 H. A. Goldsborough was a brother of Louis M. Goldsborongh, com- mander of the Massachusetts, which was in the Sound in the spring of 1850, making an examination of the shores with reference to military and naval reservations, and the security of commerce. H. A. Goldsborough remained at Olympia when the Massachusetts left in July, and became a resident of the territory. He devoted much time to exploring for minerals, and discovered coal on the Stilaguamish River as early as the autumn of 1850. Or. Specta. tor, Nov. 14, 1850. He was the first collector of internal revenue in Wash.
49
PETITION FOR A NEW TERRITORY.
To this motion the settlers on the Cowlitz made a quick response, holding a meeting on the 7th of July at the house of John R. Jackson, who was chairman, and E. D. Warbass secretary. At this meeting Chapman was present, and with Warbass and S. S. Ford reported resolutions favoring the object of the proposed convention. The committee of arrangements consisted of George Drew, W. L. Frazer, and E. D. Warbass, and the corresponding committee of J. B. Chapman and George B. Roberts.
When the convention assembled on the day ap- pointed there were present twenty-six delegates.17 The business the convention accomplished was the memorializing of congress on the subject of division, the instruction of the Oregon delegate in conformity with this memorial, the petitioning of congress for a territorial road from some point on Puget Sound to Walla Walla, and a plank road from the Sound to the mouth of the Cowlitz, with suitable appropriations. It also asked that the benefits of the donation land law should be extended to the new territory in case their prayer for division should be granted. It de- fined the limits of twelve counties, substantially in the form in which they were established by the Ore- gon legislature; and having made so good a beginning, adjourned on the second day to the 3d of May follow- ing, to await the action of congress in the interim,18 when, if their prayer should have been refused, they were to proceed to form a state constitution and ask
17 From Monticello, near the month of the Cowlitz, Seth Catlin, Jonathan Burbee, Robert Huntress; from Cowlitz landing, E. D. Warbass, John R. Jackson, W. L. Frazer, Simon Plomondon; from Newaukum, S. S. Saunders, A. B. Dillenbaugh, Marcel Birnie, Sidney S. Ford, James Cochran, Joseph Borst; from Tumwater, M. T. Simmons, Clanrick Crosby, Joseph Broshears, A. J. Simmons; from Olympia, A. M. Poe, D. S. Maynard, D. F. Brownfield; from Steilacoom, T. M. Chambers, John Bradley, J. B. Chapman, H. C. Wil- son, John Edgar, and F. S. Balch. Or. Statesman, Sept. 23, 1851.
18 The memorial was prepared by Chapman, Balch, and M. T. Simmons. The other committees were as follows: Territorial Government, Chapman, Jackson, Simmons, Huntress, and Chambers; Districts and Counties, Brown- field, Wilson, Crosby, Jackson, Burbee, Plomondon, Edgar, and Warbass; Rights and Privileges of Citizens, Huntress, Maynard, and Chapman; Internal Improvements, M. T. Simmons, Burbee, and Borst; Ways and Means, Frazer, A. J. Simmons, and Bradley.
HIST. WASH .- 4
50
POLITICS AND DEVELOPMENT.
admission into the union! Such was the expression of the representatives 19 of Lewis county-for every precinct represented was in the county of Lewis, Pa- cific and Clarke counties having sent no delegates. The grievances suffered were in fact chiefly felt in the region represented at the convention.
Soon after the Cowlitz meeting occurred the con- flict of the jurymen of Lewis county, before referred to, with their first federal officer, Judge Strong. In accordance with an act of the legislature authorizing and requiring the county judges, any two of whom should constitute a board of county commissioners for the selection of a county seat, the place of holding court was fixed at S. S. Ford's claim on the Cheha- lis. But Judge Strong preferred holding court at Jackson's house, twenty miles nearer to the Cowlitz landing, sending a peremptory order to the jurymen to repair to Highlands, which they, resenting the im- periousness of the judge, refused to do, but held a public meeting and talked of impeachment. Chap- man, for purposes of his own, glossed over the offence given by Strong, both he and Brownfield, as well as Lancaster, siding with the federal officers against the people on the meeting of the legislature in December ;
19 Chapman, in his autobiography in Livingston's Eminent Americans, iv. 436, says that, after much exertion, 'he obtained a convention of 15 members, but not one parliamentary gentleman among them, hence the whole business devolved upon him;' that he 'drew up all the resolutions' and the memorial, though other members offered them in their own names, and so contrived that every name should appear in the proceedings, to give the appearance of a large convention; and that neither of the men on the committee with him could write his name. Autobiographies should be confirmed by two cred- ible witnesses. In this instance Chapman has made use of the circumstance of Simmons' want of education to grossly misrepresent the intelligence of the community of which such men as Ebey, whose private correspondence in my possession shows him to be a man of refined feelings, Goldsborough, Catlin, Warbass, Balch, Crosby, Wilson, and others were members. As to Simmons, although his want of scholarship was an impediment aud a mortification, he possessed the real qualities of a leader, which Chapman lacked; for the latter was never able to achieve either popularity or position, though he strove hard for botlı. The census of 1850 for Lewis county gives the total white population at 437, only six of whom, over twenty years of age, were not able to write. It is probable that not more than one out of the six was sent to the conven- tion, and he was appointed on account of his brain-power and consequent in- fluence.
51
THE FIRST NEWSPAPER.
and the affairs of the whole trans-Columbia region, not attended to by J. A. Anderson of Clatsop and Pacific counties, were suffered to pass without notice.20
This, however, Anderson did for them: he pre- sented a petition from J. B. Chapman and fifty-five others for the establishment of a new county, to be called Simmons, and the readjustment of the eastern boundary of Lewis county. The boundary of the new county was defined as described by the commit- tee on counties of the August convention, but the council amended the house bill by substituting Thurs- ton for Simmons; and the limits of Lewis on the east were removed fifteen miles east of the junction of the forks of the Cowlitz, running due north to the south- ern boundary of Thurston county.
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