USA > Washington > History of Washington; the rise and progress of an American state, Vol. II > Part 32
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In July Samuel Hancock and A. B. Rabbeson went back to Cowlitz, where they were employed by Simon Plomondon to build a brick kiln on his claim, and burned a kiln of brick. These were the first brick burned north of the Columbia.
Early in 1848 Thomas W. Glasgow made a trip to Whidby Island, where he located a claim, built a cabin and planted some wheat and potatoes at a point nearly opposite the pres- ent city of Port Townsend. He then returned to Budd's Inlet, where he induced Rabbeson and Carnefix to visit his claims, which they started to do, going north by way of North Bay and Hood's Canal. Here they found Indians who had never before seen a white man. Seeing Carnefix doing the cooking and other work about the camp, they supposed him to be a slave, and one of the chiefs offered to buy him. This incident so amused Glasgow and Rabbeson, who would have been mistaken for slaves themselves had it been their turn to cook, and they made so much sport of Carnefix on account of it, that he turned back and left them to pursue their journey alone.
Not long after their arrival at Glasgow's claim, they noticed that a large number of Indians were assembling in their neighborhood. They held a big hunt, at which a
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large number of deer and much other game was killed, and a great feast followed, with noisy demonstrations lasting far into the night. These proceedings caused them some anxiety, which was increased as they saw the numbers of their visitors increasing and noted that they were begin- ning to be regarded as very unwelcome intruders. From a friendly Indian, whose acquaintance Glasgow had made while building his cabin and planting his garden, they learned that Patkanim, chief of the Snoqualmies, one of the largest tribes on the Sound, was counseling his followers to begin immediate war on the settlers. They were few in numbers now, he argued, and it would be easy to kill them or drive them away, and capture all their property. But they were increasing rapidly, and if war was not made upon them soon they would become invincible. There would be no room for the Indians; the white men would want to be rid of them and with their fire ships they would transport them to a distant island, where the sun never shone and from which they could never escape. He therefore urged his followers to begin killing at once and not to stop until the last white man was slain or had left the country.
Upon learning this information Rabbeson made haste to leave the island. Glasgow remained behind only for a little time, when he too fled, abandoning his claim and all his improvements.
In July of this year, Rev. Pascal Ricard, with a small party of Oblate missionaries, arrived on the Sound and established St. Joseph's mission on the east side of Budd's Inlet, about a mile north of Sylvester's claim. During the same season Samuel Hancock took up a claim on the west side of the inlet, where he built a warehouse and wharf.
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After his escape from Whidby Island, Rabbeson went back to the Cowlitz settlement again, accompanied by Jesse Fer- guson, who owned and took with him a grain cradle which some have supposed to be the only implement of that kind that had ever been seen north of the Columbia River at that time. But as a matter of fact cradles were used at Fort Nisqually to cut grain as early as 1838,* though scythes were sometimes used when the straw was very short, as was often the case.
Several events now combined to check the progress of settlement, which had been so auspiciously begun. The immigration of 1846 was less than that of 1845, which has been estimated as high as 3,000, as before stated. For this no doubt the Mexican war was responsible, as the volunteers called for were more largely apportioned to the new Western States, where the war spirit was strong, than to the older States, and more men were offered than were required. Illinois furnished six regiments, Indiana five, Missouri more than 9,000 men, and Iowa about 1,000, and it was from these States that the immigrants heretofore had chiefly come.
But other causes interfered to turn those that did come, away from northern Oregon. Though the number who crossed the plains in 1847 was larger than in any previous year, being estimated as high as 5,000, but few of them crossed the Columbia. The Whitman massacre, which occurred in November of that year, and the Cayuse war immediately following it, alarmed the newcomers. They soon learned that one cause of the massacre was that the Indians held the missionaries responsible for bringing the measles and smallpox among them, and that these diseases were prev- alent among other tribes on both sides of the mountains.
* Journal of Occurrences, July 19, 1838.
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Their safety and that of their families seemed to demand more concentration in making settlements. Most of the new- comers therefore turned to the Willamette Valley.
The discovery of gold in California, in 1848, not only turned the tide of emigration strongly toward that part of the coast, in the succeeding years, but drew away many from the newer settlements north of the Columbia as it did from those south of it. Many of those who had arrived on the Sound among the earliest, as well as those who had come recently, and had hardly rested after their long trip from the Missouri, hurried away to the new El Dorado. Some went with their wagons, others by sea. Their departure left the new community very much reduced, and for the time seriously checked the progress of improvement in all lines. The ring of the ax in the small clearings almost ceased to be heard, the plow stood still in the furrow, and in the little mills at New Market the sound of the grinding and sawing was low indeed.
The effect of this setback is well shown by the result of the first census, which Governor Lane ordered to be taken, among the first of his acts after his arrival in the territory. It was taken in 1849 and showed that in all Oregon, north of the Columbia, there were just 304 people, 189 of whom were American citizens and 115 foreigners. Of these 231 were males and 73 females.
But the goldseekers began to return soon after this census was taken, and many of them brought well-filled purses, not with coined money, but with gold dust, which they knew how to pass from hand to hand at a fair valuation, and it served the uses of money exceeding well. If their departure had caused a halt in development, their return, with their gold dust, soon set it to moving again at greatly accelerated speed.
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They brought with them something else that was almost as useful and valuable as their gold dust, and that was the news that San Francisco already offered a market for their timber, and the products of their farms, at very satisfactory prices, and, though they might not then have guessed it, the market was to increase more rapidly than they would be able to supply it. The first and most urgent need of the new city was for piles and planking to build wharves. Its next was to be for lumber to build houses. These needs the shores of the Sound could supply. Labor to cut the trees and prepare them for shipment alone was needed, and those who were to perform it were already beginning to come, and in such numbers that, when the census of 1850 was taken, the population of the trans-Columbia region was found to have more than trebled since Governor Lane's census was taken the year previous.
The national census for 1850 showed that there were 1,049 white inhabitants north of the Columbia. The Vancouver district, as it had been formerly known, was now Clarke County. It comprised all the country east of the Cowlitz River, and Lewis County all west of it. In Lewis County there were 146 dwelling houses, and an equal number of families. There were 13 children attending school and a total of 23 had been enrolled. In Clarke County there were 95 families and II children attending school.
This population was widely scattered. Its principal centers were at the two stations of the Hudson's Bay Com- pany, at Vancouver and Nisqually, and at the head of Budd's Inlet. Both at Vancouver and Nisqually there were still more Hudson's Bay people than Americans, and some who had formerly been employed by the Company, and who were married, or were living with Indian women, had taken claims
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along the river east of Vancouver. There was also a similar colony at Muck Creek, that was regarded as a part of the Nisqually station. Simon Plomondon, an old servant of the Company, who is mentioned in its records as early as 1833, had gathered about him a smaller colony on the Cow- litz, among whom were Peter Bercier, the old guide, Antoine Govain, and another Canadian named Thibault, and per- haps two or three others. Columbia Lancaster, who had crossed the plains in 1847, and settled in the Willamette Valley, had now removed to the north side of the Columbia, and taken up a claim near the mouth of Lewis River. He had been one of the judges of the supreme court, under the provisional government, and was to be Washington's first delegate in Congress. William Dillon had fixed his claim on the north side of the river, near the mouth of the Willamette, where he had established a ferry. Other settlers along the river were R. Covington, John Colder, Joseph Gibbon, D. C. Parker, S. D. Maxon, D. Stringer, Solomon Strong, John Stringer, Henry Van Alman, Squire Bozarth, Wm. Goodwin, A. J. Malick, Abram Robie, D. Sturges, W. H. Tappen and Jane Caples.
Jonathan Burpee, after making a short stop at or near where Kalama now stands, had moved up the Cowlitz to the neighborhood of its forks, where he became a prominent settler. Other settlers in the neighborhood were Seth Cat- lin, Peter W. Crawford, Mr. West, Henry D. Huntington- "Uncle Darb" as he was familiarly called in later years- Nathaniel and David Stone, J. B. Butler, Jesse Fowler, L. P. Smith, R. C. Smith, J. Busbie and V. M. Wallace. James O. Raynor, Royal C. Smith and John E. Picknell also settled north of the Columbia, about that time. Aber- nethy & Clark had built a small saw mill on the little creek,
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opposite Oak Tree Point, below the mouth of the Cowlitz, where they began sawing lumber in 1848. Alexander D. Abernethy, long respected in Oregon and Washington, was the resident partner, and manager of the company, and had built a home in the neighborhood. The mill did a very successful business from the start, and for years afterward sent a continual and increasing supply of lumber to San Francisco. At Cathlamet, a short distance farther down the river, James Birnie, who had long been in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company on the coast, and finally its chief factor at Astoria, but now retired from its service, had fixed his home. Judge William Strong also had taken a claim in that neighborhood, while W. T. Harrington had fixed his home some ten or twelve miles further west. Pa- cific City, on the north bank of the Columbia near its mouth, had been laid out by Dr. Elijah White on the claim of James D. Holman, who had among his neighbors Peter S. Stewart and a brother of L. A. Loomis. Holman had a hotel there which he had bought ready made on board a ship in San Francisco, and the proprietors of the town had high hopes that it would some day be a great city. There was also a small settlement at Chinook, and a few other settlers along the river and around the southern extremity of Shoalwater Bay, among whom were Captain James Scarborough, the old Hudson's Bay Company skipper, John Edmunds, George Dawson, Washington Hall, George Davison, W. P. Edwards, James Johnson, William McCarthy, William McGumningill, J. G. Pickernell and John Meldrum.
The small but exceedingly palatable oysters, for which Shoalwater Bay has since become noted, had been found, and during the summer of 1850 Capt. J. W. Russel had taken a small quantity of them to San Francisco, by steamer,
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where they were received with much favor. Capt. Felstead also took a supply by sailing ship, but they arrived in bad order and were a total loss. Anthony Ludlam then fitted out the schooner Sea Serpent to engage in the oyster trade, and a company was formed later which sent the schooner Robert Bruce to the bay for cargo, but while she was loading, the crew quarreled, and the ship was set on fire and burned to the water's edge. The crew, being unable to get away promptly, built themselves cabins, took up claims, and became permanent settlers, near what has since been known as Bruceport, from the name of the ship.
There may possibly have been another settler or two along the coast. J. B. Chapman about this time took a claim in Gray's Harbor. E. D. Warbass had taken a claim near the old Cowlitz landing, where he kept a small hotel, and Andrew F. Simmons had also located there. Further north between the Cowlitz and the Chehalis were O. Bouchard, J. B. Broulier, John B. Brule, William Cottineau, O. Donifa, William Cottowaine, George Drew, George and James Germain and S. S. Saunders.
Some time in 1850 David F. and Putman Bradford, B. B. Bishop, George L. and George W. Johnson, George Drew, T. B. Pierce, Lawrence W. Coe, S. M. Hamilton, and F. A. Chenowith went up the Columbia to the Cascades, which seemed to be the utmost limit of navigation and a promising site for a future city, and made claims there. They opened a store at the lower Cascades, in which the Johnsons, Pierce and Chenowith, were, or subsequently became, interested. The Bradfords, Coe, and Bishop settled at the upper Cas- cades.
Before the year closed John M. Swan, who had come up by sea from California, made a claim immediately east of
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the settlement on Budd's Inlet, which was subsequently known as Swantown, and Henry Murray, who came with him, T. C. Chambers and LaFayette Balch had settled at Steilacoom .* This had been a promising settlement for some time. It is mentioned in the journal kept at Fort Nisqually as early as April 1849, and T. M. Chambers was there early in May and D. M. Chambers a few days later.
T. M. Chambers took up a claim at the mouth of the creek which now bears his name, and built a saw mill and later a flouring mill there. He also staked off a claim near his own, which he proposed to enter in the name of one of his sons, all of which caused Dr. Tolmie a great deal of uneasiness. Both claims were on land claimed by the Puget Sound Agricultural Company, and the doctor frequently and formally warned him to go away and make his improve- ments elsewhere, or else not make them at all, but this Chambers refused to do. He not only refused, but after con- sulting with Col. Ebey, he openly did all that he could to induce other Americans to settle near him, contending that the Agricultural Company was a foreign concern, en- titled to no rights, and having none that any American was bound to respect, or would be when the situation was fully understood at Washington. He also had for neighbors three sailors, who had come with the British ship Albion to New Dungeness to load spars, and was seized there in April 1850 for violating the revenue laws. They were William Bolton, Frederick Rabjohn and William Elders, and were cutting timber on their own account. Bolton had
* The name of a lusty young Indian who was employed for several years, more or less regularly, about Fort Nisqually, and who long sur- vived nearly all his contemporaries, both among the members of his tribe and the officers and employees at the Fort.
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been ship's carpenter for the Albion, and was preparing, or perhaps had already prepared, to start a small shipyard near Chamber's place. Still later came C. C. Batchelder, A. A. Plummer, William B. Wilton, and one or two others from San Francisco to cut piles. They landed some distance north of Steilacoom, at what is now known as Higgin's Beach, where Wilton took up a claim, and all the party remained there during the winter. A number of the old Hudson's Bay Company men and a few others had also taken claims on the prairie farther south, and among these were Isaac Bostian, N. Eaton, John Edgar, T. W. Glasgow, Benjamin Gordon, F. Gravail and L. A. Smith.
In August 1849, Maj. Hathaway, Capt. Hill and other officers of the first artillery arrived on the Sound to select a site for the new military post they had come to establish. They spent the night of the 23d at the fort, and on the 24th fixed upon the ground where the Asylum for the Insane now stands, preferring it to any other chiefly for the reason that the Company already had some buildings there, which could easily be made comfortable for the use of the officers. While the Company owned these buildings it did not own the land and the government did, and yet an arrangement was made for the use of the buildings, under which it paid rent to the Company for property that was practically its own, for several years.
Early in December General Persifor F. Smith, then in command on the coast, paid this new post a visit, accom- panied by Colonel Hooker-afterwards major general and commander of the Army of the Potomac-and Major Vin- ton, members of his staff. They also visited Fort Nisqually and dined there, and Dr. Tolmie records in his journal that they were "all very agreeable and gentlemanlike men."
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Early in October, Col. Ebey made a trip down the Sound, and on the 13th took up the claim on Whidby Island, which Glasgow had abandoned, and to which something more than a year later he brought his family.
During this same year 1850, John C. Holgate, who had come to Oregon in 1847, the year of the Whitman massacre, in the same train with David Shelton, L. B. Hastings, Albert Briggs and others, and had afterwards served in the Cayuse war, came to the Sound, and after exploring it to his satis- faction fixed his claim on the east shore of Elliot Bay, near where the city of Seattle now stands. He was an uncle of Hon. C. H. Hanford, now judge of the United States dis- trict court for the western district of Washington, and having located his own claim, he wrote the judge's family, then living in Iowa, urging them to come at once, as he had chosen some land near his own that he was sure would please them. This land was near Georgetown, at present a suburb of Seattle, but before the family arrived in 1853, it had been taken by others.
The population of the future territory, at the close of the first census year, was therefore scattered in widely separated settlements, along the north bank of the Columbia, from the Cascades to its mouth, and northward along the coast to Shoalwater Bay, and possibly as far as Gray's Harbor; along the banks of the Cowlitz to its forks, and thence along the trail made by the Simmons party, to Budd's Inlet, with scattered outposts at the mouth of the Nisqually, and at Steilacoom. Samuel Hancock and some others had endeav- ored to found a settlement near Cape Flattery but had failed. They arrived at Fort Nisqually on March 15th, "having for the present abandoned their undertaking there, and seemingly soon to break up the copartnership," as Dr.
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Tolmie's journal says. "Two days earlier," says the same authority, "some Americans arrived from the Sinahomish (probably the Snohomish) River where they had been explor- ing." Who these Americans were and what became of them there is now no means of knowing. They may have been mere prospectors, who came to explore the country and not finding what they wanted went elsewhere. Such a party had come to the fort in the preceding December. They were nineteen in number and had come up from California "in the American barque John D. Caton, which had been obliged to put into Victoria in distress." They arrived at the fort on the evening of December 2d. They remained there two days "waiting for horses to be collected to trans- port them to the Cowlitz" and during that time purchased $121 worth of goods and supplies at the company store. On the 5th enough horses having been brought in to supply their needs they took their departure.
American merchants ships had not been much seen in the Sound since Capt. Gray's time, but they were now begin- ning to appear and in encouraging numbers. On November 23, 1849, Capt. Mosher of the ship Inez, apparently an American vessel, and a boat crew arrived at Nisqually, having left the ship tidebound below the narrows. She had come for a cargo of shingles, which had been bought of Col. Simmons, and which he and some of his neighbors had no doubt made and sold to the Company. The ship arrived at the fort on the 5th, and on the day following the General Patterson, Capt. Croser, arrived with a cargo for the fort. On the 23d Dr. Tolmie offered Capt. Mosher $1,000 to take a cargo of a thousand live sheep to Victoria, but he declined the offer and sailed on the 25th without them. On February 23, 1850, the American barque Pleiades was in the
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neighborhood of Nisqually taking in logs, and the Sacramento was also lying near by loading with shingles and logs. All these vessels seem to have been under the American flag, though that fact is not expressly mentioned in the fort journal with regard to all of them.
Early in January 1850 the brig Orbit arrived in Budd's Inlet, sailed up as far as she could safely go toward the new town of New Market, and cast anchor. Her name, suggest- ive of a completed circuit, was auspicious, and gave promise of a history of more than ordinary interest, if not of a fame not soon to be forgotten. She was from Calais, Me., and had brought out a company of goldseekers to San Francisco. Capt. William H. Dunham was her master. On the evening of January Ist, he had called at Fort Nisqually and asked for an Indian pilot to take him to New Market. On the following morning, according to the fort journal, he called at the fort accompanied by several of his passengers, and purchased some mutton. He also told the story of the ship's stormy experience on the trip up the coast. "She had sailed from San Francisco, November 2, and reached Cape Flattery after a run of eight or ten days. She was then driven by southwest winds as far north as Cape Scott, and after some delay, and danger of being driven ashore, she made Neah Bay where she was detained about fourteen days, windbound. Capt. Dunham states that owing to the favorable representa- tions made to him of the navigation of the De Fuca Straits, he had not properly ballasted the Orbit at San Francisco. He touched at Victoria."*
Col. Isaac N. Ebey, who had come to the Sound in 1847, was at New Market when the Orbit arrived there. He was a man of force and enterprise, and as the Orbit was for sale,
* Journal of Occurrences, Fort Nisqually, Jan. 2, 1850.
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he and B. F. Shaw, Edmund Sylvester and a man named Jackson purchased her, and thus she became the first ship owned on Puget Sound, and the forerunner of a fleet of American ships, hailing from it, which has already established a vast and rapidly growing trade with the Orient, and com- pleted the circuit of the world's commerce around the earth.
Dunham, after selling the Orbit, joined the settlers, tak- ing the claim which Sylvester had previously located on Chambers' Prairie, where he was killed the following year by being thrown from a horse. Simmons meantime had sold such right as he had acquired to his claim at New Market, together with his mills, for a round price, said to have been $35,000, to Crosby & Gray, formerly of Portland, and with this money, or part of it, bought Jackson's interest in the Orbit, together with enough of the other shares to make him the controlling owner, and taking Charles H. Smith, a friend of Capt. Dunham who had come up with him from San Francisco, as his partner, sent her back to San Francisco with a cargo of piles, which Smith, who sailed as supercargo, was to sell, and buy and bring home a stock of general merchandise with the proceeds. This he did, returning in July.
Meantime Sylvester's partner Smith having died, leaving him the sole owner of the two claims they had taken, and having sold the one he had himself chosen to Dunham, he took possession of the one Smith had selected, platted it and changed the name, at the suggestion of Col. Ebey apparently, from Smithfield or Smithter, to Olympia, a name suggested by the fine view the place commanded of the Olympic Moun- tains. He had built a log hotel 16 x 24 feet in size, and containing two rooms and an attic in which his guests slept on bunks. He now offered to give Simmons and his partner
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two lots in the townsite, at the corner of Main and First streets, if he would build a store on them, and Simmons accepted. A building 20 x 40 feet in size, of rough boards, and equally rough furnishings, was soon constructed, and the new stock of goods installed in it, with Smith in charge. A thriving business began immediately, the settlers finding here for the first time an opportunity to buy many things that the Hudson's Bay Company, whose goods were selected solely with a view of trade with savages, could not supply. Nor was the business without a fair return of profit, it would seem, for among the goods offered and prices charged, plain cook stoves, without furniture, are mentioned at $80 each.
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