USA > Washington > History of Washington the evergreen state : from early dawn to daylight with portraits and biographies Vol. II > Part 5
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Pacific Railroad, was strongly advocated. Under the head of the great inconvenience arising from lack of facilities for com- munication with California and the East, from which the people of the Territory were then suffering, he very aptly illustrates the situation as follows-a situation which we of to-day, who grumble if the overland mail with letters not a week old be a trifle late, can hardly appreciate. He said :
" For six weeks of the present winter has this Territory been without communication with the States ; yet in this interval sailing vessels reached Seattle from San Francisco, and brought from that port information on January 12th, which only reached the same place by mail more than six weeks subsequently. There are reasons, growing out of the condition of the Territory, which call for an efficient mail service by steamers. There are nearly five thousand Indians on the shores of the sound, a large revenue district with innumerable ports offering facilities for the - evasion of the revenue laws, and a disputed territory. The en- trance to the sound is in common with a foreign possession to the north wielded with an almost despotic sway, and the abode of large bands of aborigines. For the management of public business, the protection alike of the Indian and the settler, and upholding of national and territorial rights, it is essential that steamers should run directly from San Francisco to Puget Sound, and an efficient mail service by steamers be organized in the sound itself."
So we see his plans map out and foreshadow the advantages of to-day. Little did they dream then, as that infant Legisla- ture sat in solemn conclave in the backwoods settlement of Olympia to listen to the inaugural of their new Executive, that 1892 would find those waters ploughed far and wide by vapor- driven keels ; that no bay or inlet in all the ramifications of the sound should be unknown to their visitations until every pine- clad bluff and promontory had echoed to the scream of their steam whistles.
With less wisdom, because less knowledge, Governor Stevens, as Superintendent ex officio of the tribes within his gubernatorial bailiwick, touched upon the Indian question, like most "sen- derfeet," very tenderly. He came to the coast imbued with those rose-water ideas of Eastern sentimentalism, in relation to those merciless Arabs of the wild West, of which after experi-
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ences were destined to widely disillusion him. He characterizes them in his message as being " for the most part a docile, harn .- less race, disposed to obey the laws and be good members of the State." We can well imagine what grim smiles must have crept round the lips of some of his auditors-the old settlers present- whose stern experience, ofttimes written in blood, had taught them a very different reading of these " docile, harmless" crea- tures. It will be seen that in his personal efforts at a later day to carry out the suggestions he then made, for " the equitable extinction of their titles and the reservation of such portions as were essential to their comfort and subsistence," Governor Stc- vens came very near sealing their treacherous treaties with his blood. It is no fault of those "good members of the State" that the Governor's scalp was not hung up as an esteemed trophy of a great American " tyee," to be smoke-dried in their wigwams.
The ambiguous confusion of legal enactments, and conse- quences likely to result from their recent judicial connection with Oregon, and the necessity growing out of this condition of things for immediately digesting a code to arrange all this, next engaged his attention.
Evans says, in his synopsis of the message :
"He urged the organization of Eastern Washington into counties ; the erection of new ones, and change of county boun- daries ; the passage of an election and militia law, and in the lat- ter relation made many suggestions as to the formation of a proper militia system. The message took strong ground in favor of extinguishing by purchase the titles of the Hudson's Bay and Puget Sound Agricultural companies to any possession or pos- sessory rights under the treaty, and recommended legislative investigation and a report as to the value and the policy to be pursued to remove the presence of those companies from the Ter- ritory. He advised the Legislature that the Hudson's Bay Com- pany would no longer be allowed to trade with Indians within the Territory ; that notice had been given to that effect under instructions from the Secretary of State, and that the company would be allowed until July 1st, 1854, to wind up their affairs, after which time the laws relating to regulating intercourse with the Indians would be strictly enforced."
In concluding, the necessity of educational advantages and
Engª by F G. Kernan,N.Y.
Mers. Julia A. Espey
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the formation of a territorial library were thus forcibly pre- sented :
" A system which should place within the reach of all the full development of the faculties with which they were endowed. Let every youth, however limited his opportunities, find his place in the school, the college, or the university, if God has given him the necessary gifts. A great champion of liberty said, more than two hundred years ago, that the true object of a com - plete and general education was to fit man to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously all the offices, both private and public, of peace and war. Congress has made liberal appropria- tions for the support of schools ; and I would recommend that a special commission be instituted to report on the whole school system ; I will also recommend that Congress be memorialized to appropriate land for a university."
Truly, this inaugural of Washington Territory's first Governor strikes the right keynote ; avoiding all flights of oratory and waste of unpractical suggestion, it talks in the language of com- mon-sense to the level-headed men whose thorough acquaint- ance with frontier needs well fitted them to do as they did- accept, and, still better, act upon his recommendations. There is no advice given in this statesmanlike document which has not become an established fact and produced results whose harvest of to-day far exceeds the wildest hopes of those who in their time sowed the seed with a faith that, trusting to the sunshine and the rain of God's providence, would see no cloud of discour- agement in all the gloom of their ofttimes lowering skies.
One of the first matters to be attended to was the creation of a code. This, thanks to the able efforts of such fine judicial minds as Chief Justice Lander, William Shaw, the late Associate Justice of Oregon, and Victor Monroe, Associate Justice of Washington (appointed a code council for that purpose), soon took shape and form, and eventuated in the adoption of laws so well digested that they remained in force, with very slight modi- fications-which in nowise improved the original text-until Washington put off the robes of her novitiate to enter the sis- terhood of States.
Elwood Evans, a lawyer himself, and as a practitioner at her Bar well fitted to judge as to the working of this code of territorial Washington, gives it his unqualified approval,
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and thus refers to the elements which entered into its constitu- tion :
" The Organic Act prescribed as essential to the validity of a statute that it should refer to but one subject-matter, with a clearly expressed title. Hence, each bill was separately taken up and passed, resulting in a full code of civil procedure in the main, following the practice of New York, with occasional inter- polations from Indiana and Ohio, the representative States of two of its authors. With this was adopted a Criminal Practice Act, a Probate Law, and Justice's Practice. The election laws and many of the acts which constituted the political code were similar to those of Oregon, wisely retained because the people were familiar therewith and because of a partiality for Iowa law, with which the code of Oregon was fully flavored.
" The boundaries of several of the old counties were rede- fined. Seven new ones were created : Cowlitz was set apart from Lewis, and Wahkiakum later on from its western side ; Chehalis and Sawamish were detached from Thurston (afterward named Mason, in honor of Charles H. Mason, the first Secretary and often Acting Governor) ; Clallam was set off from Jefferson county ; Whatcom constituted all the territory included in Island county, and also took in the Archipelago de Haro, so long in dispute with Great Britain, to be settled in our favor by arbitration of Emperor William of Germany ; the county of Shamania was set off from Clark-it was all of. Eastern Wash- ington, the territory lying east of Cape Horn in the Columbia River ; from it was set off the county of Walla Walla. It was an empire in extent. The land claim of Lloyd Brooke was its county-seat. At the next session this gentleman was invested with the offices of Probate Judge, County Auditor, and County Treasurer," which goes to prove either great fitness for office or a dearth of people to fill the positions. Various other officers were appointed, but as none of them qualified and no local organization was attempted, it seems needless to enumerate them here. The act creating the county, however, remained on the statute-books and was never repealed. The vast territory includ- ed in this county was allowed two members of the House of Representatives ; there were sufficient residents to justify this, but their residences were far apart, so the attempt to legislate for it was, after all, but a dead letter.
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The further official acts of this the first territorial Legislature of Washington was confined to giving force as it might to the carrying out of the recommendations of the Governor's message and arranging and putting in running order the governmental . machinery by the designating of county-seats, appointing their officers in the new counties, and filling such vacancies as existed in the counties already organized. Generally speaking, the acts and deliberations of this initial Legislative Assembly, composed of men hastily gathered and selected to represent their fellow- frontiersmen, are worthy of all praise. It was in all respects an excellent example to many of its more extended and far less business-like successors. It is not saying too much to declare that Congress itself could take a leaf or two from their book without detriment to its " Record." The Organic Act limited its continuance to one hundred days, yet it adjourned sine die after remaining in session but sixty-four in all. There was evidently no time frittered away in personalities, no windy, brainless human balloons exhausting themselves to prove anew the real- ity of " vox et pretærea nihil ;"' no fierce denunciations to be ultimately taken and so accepted by the honorable gentleman at whom they were hurled in their " Pickwickian sense." No ; its members were there to attend to business, and did so in a credit- able manner. There was, of course, a large temptation to ex- press, though they could hardly amplify, their needs of all kinds -schools, roads, post-offices, more frequent mails-in short, a tightening of every link which bound them to their old-time American civilization, whose conditions they were determined to repeat and renew in their integrity upon the far-off Pacific shore. To do this, they were obliged to appeal to the general Government for the sinews of war. Congressional appropria- tions were, in their then condition of poverty, their only hope for material aid, and for every dollar of assistance so received most liberally have the federal authorities been repaid in the progress, respectability, patriotism, and wealth of this our noble State of new-born Washington. We have given no inconsider- able space to the doings of this first deliberative, legally organ- ized Assembly of the Territory ; but the importance of their work fully justifies minuteness. It was the first gun of the long legislative campaign, the germ of that political evolution through which the Territory, with growth ofttimes retarded,
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finally blossomed into the State and laid the foundation of that temple of equal rights, based upon law and supposed to be inhabited by the not always blinded goddess of the scales- Justice.
Engaby F. G. Kenan NY.
Mary a. Latham
CHAPTER XXV.
INDIAN WARS FOLLOW WHITE INJUSTICE.
' ' Life for life' was taught of old, That bloody creed the Indians hold ; One for warrior newly named, Two where chieftain rank is gained.
' Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth,' Till blood washed out the deed of ruth.
Waiting only time and tide, Revenge found victims far and wide."
-BREWERTON.
THE chapter upon which we are about to enter must, unfortu- nately, read more like the records of some mediaval savagery than a narrative of nineteenth century's attempts at peaceful occupation and settlement. The feeble infant colony-for such, indeed, it was-when compared with the extent of territory to be occupied and their distance from thickly populated civilized centres, was about to be menaced with all the horrors of per- fidious Indian warfare-a conflict which stopped at no treach- ery, felt no mercy, and being thoroughly acquainted with the country and the habits of the settlers, knew just when and where to strike to their own advantage. In this respect history has again and again repeated itelf in the evolution of our country from its aboriginal barbarism. Every page of the log-book of our ship of state is marked by conflict with the savages ; every title to home, however humble, sealed with the lifeblood of some early occupant. The initial dirge note was struck amid the wintry woods on Plymouth's " wild New England shore, " and passed wailingly along, lighting torture fires in many a grove, shooting its deadly arrows upon the plains, and finally, after following with poetical significance the blood-red setting sun across the continent, opened a new and, if possible, more dread- ful chapter of sorrow beneath the shadows of pine-clad Puget Sound.
It is to be regretted that the initial act of many tragedies to ensue grew out of a miscarriage of justice and failure to legally
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punish a crime which, in the absence of the full evidence, we must assume to have been a murder. The Legislature had hardly ad- journed when several Northern Indians-a race not unlike the ancient border Highlanders of Scotland, peculiarly fierce, unfor- giving, and relentless in their revenges-visited Puget Sound in quest of employment and to sell articles of native handiwork. They obtained work from a man named John L. Butler upon his Donation claim on Butler's Cove, on the west side of Budd's Inlet, some three miles north of Olympia. With Butler lived a man named Burt. Their job completed, the Indians demanded payment for their services. A quarrel ensuing, Butler refused to pay what the Indians claimed. In the fight that followed the white men killed an Indian. Unfortunately, the murdered man was a prominent chief of the Stikeens, whose dwelling- place is near Sitka, in Russian America. Butler and Burt were charged with the murder, arrested, and brought before Will- iam W. Plumb, the recently appointed prosecuting attorney of the Second Judicial District, and at that very time a member of the Council, who, forgetful of duty and his sworn obligation to faithfully try the cases committed to him, moved for the dis- charge of the accused, alleging the miserable subterfuge " that Thurston County had no jail, and it would be an expense to the county to retain them in custody." So these murderers, red- handed, without even a semblance of a trial, were set at liberty. That the action of Plumb in so doing was not entirely approved is shown by the remarks of Evans, who says : "At that time there were many in the community who denounced that need- less, unprovoked homicide as a wanton murder and the miser- able travesty on law and justice which succeeded its commis- sion."
So the deed was done and the murderers discharged. Did it end there ? Alas ! no. The consequences of their crime were both disastrous and far-reaching. It should be premised here that the Indian idea of justice, like the old Mosaic law, is summed up in " blood for blood ;" but in exacting the penalty, the savage does not stop to inquire whether his victim had any part or, indeed, knowledge of the crime he seeks to expiate. If he had, it was so much gained ; but all he cares to know is that he revenges upon the pale face the deed of the white man. The manes of his fellow-warrior or friend must be placated, and
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his own hatred appeased by all the scalps he can secure ; and if he can obtain those of " tyees" (chief men), so much the better.
Now comes the sequel, or, rather, the beginnings of the results growing out of the acts of Butler and Burt. In the latter part of May, in ten great war canoes, each carrying from fifty to sixty well-armed braves, these Northern Indians descended upon the sound to revenge their chief. As such they would have two lives for one ; had he been " a common man," a single sacrifice might have sufficed, but a leader demanded a double ex- piation. Nor did they come in vain. Landing on Vancouver's Island, they made a mistake-a most unfortunate and not usual one for them, for these Indians were generally able to discrimi- nate between the Americans and their friends of the fur com- panies ; but in this instance they initiated their scheme of retributive murder by killing one Charles Bayley, a settler on the island and a British subject. He was shot fatally by a party of eight. Governor Douglas, hearing of this, immediately dis- patched a party to pursue and, if possible, capture these marauders ; but the Indians, who had too much the start, escaped in the direction of Bellingham Bay.
On Saturday, May 24th, at noon, two of these war canoes, crowded with their hostile occupants, arrived at Bellingham Bay, landing opposite the house of Mr. Clayton, who unsuspectingly walked down to the beach to meet them. They surrounded and proposed selling him some blankets. He became alarmed, and under pretence of going to the house to get money to pay for the goods offered, fled to the woods, and was pursued for a con- siderable distance. He reached the house of Captain Prattle, some five miles distant, where he took refuge, and through some visiting friendlies of the Bay Indians proceeded to warn the set- tlers. Prattle, Clayton, and five other whites, all unarmed, with the exception of an old musket with a broken lock, entered a canoe and paddled out to reconnoitre. Moving noiselessly, they thought themselves unobserved, but were pursued. Hoping to deter their followers, they fired off the old musket with the help of a live coal, and received a volley in return. The settlers then fled to the timber ; the hostiles also retired. Two of the whites had remained in a canoe as a guard ; it was afterward found rid- dled with shot, in the bottom a pool of blood ; its occupants, David Melville and George Brown, had been murdered, their
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heads severed from their bodies and carried North as trophies by these savage avengers. So we have already three innocent lives sacrificed for the crime whose punishment the miscarriage of civilized law delegated to the savage. To the murders already recorded these hostiles proceeded to add robbery. Clayton's house was stripped ; going to Whidby Island, the homes of Cap- tain Hathaway and R. B. Holbrook, who were fortunately ab- sent, were in like manner looted ; other settlers on the island were also despoiled, and then, without the loss of a man, their canoes loaded with spoil and three human heads, to attest the success of their raid, the Stikeens paddled back, and, unpursued, reached their Northern homes in safety.
Governor Stevens, who, in accordance with the request of the territorial Legislature, had returned to Washington City in the interest of the Northern Pacific Road and kindred matters, was ably represented by his Secretary, Acting Governor Mason, who exhibited on this occasion the same energy which always char- acterized his action when the good of the Territory required its exercise. Upon the receipt of the news he visited the lower sound, organized a company of Volunteers at Olympia, of which Colonel Ebey, the Collector-himself to fall a victim, as else- where recorded-was elected Captain, and did all in his power to quiet and protect the justly alarmed settlers.
The general situation as regards the Indian question on the sound at that early day may be quoted in substance from Evans as follows :
" The Indians of the sound at this time were a source of con- siderable uneasiness to the territorial authorities. Their friend- ship was questionable without threat of actual hostility. They were not afraid of molestation from the whites, who were uni- formly friendly, the men laboring and the women doing house- work for their pale-face sisters. They were fairly paid and well treated, but under all this there was a constant feeling of inse- curity and unrest. A number of white settlers had been mur- dered by Indians in different sections, and it was generally realized that caution should be exercised in dealing with them. The inexcusable act of Butler and Burt stands alone in the his- tory of American settlement on Puget Sound. It was com- mitted against a tribe-those of the far North-who were as much dreaded by the Indians of the sound as by the exposed
Eng ªby F G. Kernan NY.
James monaghan.
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white settlers. Hence the murder of their chief had no influence upon the action or feelings of the savages of the sound. Trouble, however, was brewing with them from a source nearer at hand.
" The whole difficulty grew out of their different renderings of the application of criminal law from the whites. The white, in a case of murder, deals out the same punishment to the accom- plice as the principal ; the Indian, however clear the 'aiding and abetting,' cannot understand why more than one life should be taken to appease violated law where only a single individual had been the victim.
" In the winter of 1851 a man at Crescent Harbor was mur- dered by Indians. Three years after an Indian, convicted of the crime, was legally executed. A surveyor named Hunt was their next victim ; he was found unarmed and alone, pursuing his profession, and wantonly killed. For this two Indians were tried before the court at Whatcom, found guilty, and exe- cuted. In February of 1853, William Young left Seattle with a crew of two Snohomish Indians, who murdered and robbed him en route. They were arrested. A rescue attempted by their tribe met with partial success. Of the four whites and the same number of friendly Indians, one white (Dr. Cherry) and one Indian were killed, and all the rest escaped, but severely wounded. Of the prisoners, one was killed and the other es- caped in the mêlée. Again, in 1853 an unknown white man was killed near Seattle by an Indian and buried on the shore of Lake Union. The murder, which would have been otherwise un- known, was reported by the Indians themselves. For this mur- der two Indians were hanged, on the accusations of their own people, without a trial ; but they were outlaws whom the Ind- ians themselves feared. Shortly after, at Seattle, an Indian killed his wife, and was hanged the same day by the white peo- ple. His punishment should have been left to his own race, who would have readily dealt with him. Three white men who participated in this resort to the summary procedure of Judge Lynch were arrested, and one of them was tried for murder. The Judge charged against him ; the jury remained out all night, but finally acquitted. The case of the two others was nolle prosequied. Now, no man is so bad as to be entirely friendless, and this red desperado was no exception to the rule. Two white men, Rogers and Phillips, ' suffered death at the hands of these
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avengers, to expiate the lynching of this brutal uxoricide.' It required all the conciliatory influence of Governor Mason, assisted by the prudence and friendly treatment of the natives by the set- tlers, to avert the storm, whose heat lightnings were thus made visible, and for the time being only died away in mutterings."
We now come to an incident where British arrogance met with dignified rebuke and most uncompromising resistance at the hands of Collector Ebey. In making his official round, he discovered an attempt to evade the payment of duties upon the island of San Juan. On reaching the island to make official inquiry, Charles James Griffin, claiming, as a Justice of the Peace, to represent Governor Douglas, demanded his busi- ness there. Ebey declined to answer questions. The next day the ubiquitous Hudson's Bay steamer Otter arrived with the Collector of Fort Victoria, who also " wanted to know." He was curtly informed that he (Colonel Ebey) was there as Col- lector of the Customs for Puget Sound. The Victoria man threat- ened, but gained nothing by his motion but the promise of a reve- nue officer to be stationed then and there, at the same time expressing the hope that England would have too much sense to interfere with him. Then, as if to overwhelm the American, the British Collector informed him that Governor Douglas himself was on board the Otter, and would condescend to receive him ; to which Ebey replied that if the Governor had any business with him, he was to be found in his tent on shore. Ebey then ap- pointed and swore in Captain Henry Webber as a deputy. The British then, after Ebey had left, attempted to arrest Webber, but signally failed. All of which ended in the disputed island of San Juan being occupied by two rival collectors-for Collector Sangster, of Victoria, took up his quarters there also-who seemed to get along very harmoniously.
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