USA > Washington > History of Washington; the rise and progress of an American state, Vol. II > Part 33
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36
Clanrick Crosby of Crosby & Gray, who purchased Sim- mons' claim and mill at Tumwater, had only recently arrived from the East with a rather notable party. His brother Captain Nathaniel Crosby, Jr., had come out to Portland in 1844 in command of the brig O. C. Raymond, which the government had sent round the horn with supplies for the emigrants. Finding no suitable place to store his cargo, on his arrival, he built a log house for it, which was long after- wards used for a post office. He then engaged with his ship in general trade along the coast, and with the Sandwich Islands, until 1849, when, in order to have his family brought to the coast, he sent east and purchased the brig Grecian, of 247 tons, which left New York in September of that year with twenty-four people on board, all but five of whom were his relatives .*
* Mrs. Martha R. Burr of Seattle, who was a daughter of Captain Nathaniel Crosby, Jr., gives the names and ages of this family party as follows: Capt. Clanrick Crosby, his wife Mrs. Phebe F. Crosby, their three children, Clanrick aged 12, Phebe Louisa aged 7, and Cecilia aged 4 years; First Officer Washington Hurd, his wife Mrs. Elizabeth Hurd, and child, Ella M. aged 2 years-Mrs. Hurd was Capt. Crosby's sister;
454
THE RISE AND PROGRESS
Layfette Balch arrived at Olympia, with the brig George Emery, which he owned, about the time that Simmons and his partner Smith were getting their store into operation. Entries in Dr. Tolmie's journal seem to indicate that he passed Fort Nisqually on April 4th. The people at the fort at first supposed his ship was the Orbit, but on the following day Captain Hill, from Fort Steilacoom, called with the information that "the vessel observed passing the landing yesterday was not the Orbit, but another from San Francisco, with a speculation of goods for New Market. The Captain and Colonel Ebey, who was a passenger, had called upon Hill and given him some late papers." As no other ship with " a speculation of goods" came to the Sound at or about that time, this seems to fix the date of Balch's arrival. He was not given such encouragement from the owner of the townsite at Olympia as he thought he was entitled to expect,
Second Officer Alfred Crosby, a younger brother of the captain, his wife, Mrs. Clara Nickerson Crosby, Mrs. Mary Crosby, wife of Capt. Nathaniel Jr., and their three children, Nathaniel aged 13, Mary L. aged II, and Martha R. aged 9 years; Mrs. Holmes, companion and housekeeper, who went out to join her husband, and afterwards settled in Portland; Capt. Nathaniel Crosby, Sr., father of the captain, and second officer, who remained several years, then returned to Cape Cod, where he died, and one passenger, Mr. Converse Lilly of New York. These were in the cabin. Forward there were Richard Hartley, a Scotchman, Joseph Taylor, and Foster and Nathaniel Lincoln, brothers of Mrs. Nathaniel Crosby, Jr. The Grecian arrived at Portland in March 1850. The two older Crosby brothers located at Tumwater. Capt. Nathaniel Crosby, Jr., took the first cargo of spars to China from Milton, Oregon, early in 1852, and in the fall of the same year another from Olympia. He died in Hong Kong, China, in 1856, and his widow and son returned to Puget Sound, where they settled. Mrs. Crosby died at Tumwater, in 1866. The son Nathaniel third was in business many years in Olympia, where he died. He married Miss Cordelia J. Smith of Chambers' Prairie, and they had two sons, Frank L., now United States deputy marshal at Tacoma, and Hally L., formerly of Tacoma, but now of Spokane. Alfred Crosby settled at Astoria and was for many years a master pilot on the Columbia River bar.
455
OF AN AMERICAN STATE
and he accordingly weighed anchor and sailed away in search of a town of his own. This he soon chose. The Journal of Occurrences shows that he spent the night of December 24, 1850, at Fort Nisqually, and within a few days thereafter he selected a claim on the shore of the Sound, a few miles north of the fort, and near those already taken by Murray and Chambers at Steilacoom. He proceeded to lay it out into town lots and called the place Port Steilacoom. He had brought with him from Maine the material for a building, all ready to be put together .* This was quickly unloaded and set up, the stock of goods removed to it, and the rival of Olympia was launched.
The Hudson's Bay Company now had two competitors for the trade of the settlers and the Indians, where it had heretofore had none, and it yielded to the situation very reluctantly, the settlers thought. And they were glad to think so, for those who had come earliest, before the bound- ary dispute was settled, had been repeatedly notified of the Company's exclusive rights to trade with the Indians, and warned not to interfere with them. So jealously were these rights guarded, that it was said the settlers were com- pelled to show the rents in their old garments, when they applied to purchase new ones, before they would be allowed
* Balch was not the only trader who came to the coast in these early days bringing coals to Newcastle, for the ship on which Richard Henry Dana spent his "Two Years Before the Mast" brought out, as part of her cargo to California, wine and raisins. John C. Holgate also drove a team across the plains in 1847 for a nurseryman who had a young fir, among the other trees in his stock, for which he had been offered $5 and refused it. Balch was from Bath, Me., and had come to San Francisco in command of the ship Sacramento, of which his brother was the owner. He was a lineal descendant of John Balch, who came to America from England in 1623 and settled at Beverly, Mass., where he built a house in 1638, which is still standing.
456
THE RISE AND PROGRESS
to buy, so great was the fear that they would get something with which to trade. Those whose purchases had been thus limited, if there were such, now rejoiced that the Company's monopoly was at an end, and most of them became active advertisers of and agents for the sale of American goods.
Two incidents occurred during these first five years after the settlement of the new territory began, to disturb the harmonious progress of events. News of the treaty of June 15, 1846, by which the boundary question was settled, and joint occupation of the Oregon territory by the United States and Great Britain terminated, was not received at Fort Vancouver until early in November, and at Nisqually and by the settlers on the Sound until some time later. Nearly two years after the news was received the Puget Sound Agricultural Company sent a considerable herd of cattle south of the Nisqually, to be pastured on the prairie, and the settlers saw, or thought they saw, in this an attempt to increase the Company's claim against the government by enlarging the area of lands actually used, which, under the treaty, it was to be paid for. They were quick to protest. A meeting was called, over which William Packwood pre- sided, and at which the encroachments of the Company on the rights of the settlers, and on the territory of Uncle Sam were fully discussed. A series of resolutions, drawn by Col. Isaac N. Ebey, was adopted and Col. Ebey and Rabbeson were delegated to present them to Dr. Tolmie. The lan- guage of these resolutions was more forcible than elegant, and their conclusions did not clearly follow the premises stated in the preamble. But there was no mistaking their meaning. They set forth that the cattle had been driven south of the river, in great numbers, and if allowed to remain there would consume all the vegetation of the region they
457
OF AN AMERICAN STATE
ranged over. Moreover they were wild cattle, and if per- mitted to mix with those of the settlers, a very great injury would be done. Therefore it was resolved that the Hud- son's Bay Company had opposed the settlements of the Puget Sound country, and had used misrepresentation and fraud to prevent the settlers from exploring it, and had even threatened them; that the conduct of Dr. Tolmie in endeav- oring to prevent settlement by Americans on lands which he pretended were reserved by the treaty of 1846, although he knew they were not, was censurable; that his assumption of right was only equaled by the baseness of the subterfuge by which the Company was attempting to hold other large tracts, by an apparent compliance with the organic law of the territory-that is by taking up claims in the names of servants of the Company, who did not even know where they were located, and who were compelled to convey them to the Company when their titles should be perfected. As American citizens, the settlers declared, they had 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 its welfare or prosperity, but were foreign born and owed allegiance only to Great Britain; they warned the Company that it had never been the policy of the United States to grant preemption rights to other than American citizens, or those who had declared their inten- tions to become such, in a legal form, and that such would without doubt be the condition of land grants in the expected donation law. They declared that they viewed the claims and improvements made, subsequent to the treaty, by the Puget Sound Agricultural Company, as giving it no rights, and as to their previous rights they were only possessory, and the United States had never parted with the actual title
458
THE RISE AND PROGRESS
to the lands occupied, but that any American citizen might appropriate these lands 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. They further asserted that the American settlers were under no obliga- tions to suffer the grievances above stated to remain unre- dressed, and they requested Dr. Tolmie to remove the cattle, forthwith, to the opposite side of the river and keep them there, as they were determined that no such grievance should be suffered by the settlers. And finally it was resolved "that as said society has unfairly refused to furnish Americans with sheep at any price, until quite recently, and now when those are offered for sale, they prove to be the most inferior of the flock, and those at an exorbitant price, that in this as in all acts of said society, we know that their aim is only their own interest, while it is an insult to the common sense of the Community."*
These resolutions were presented to Dr. Tolmie by the committee appointed for that purpose, and within a week the cattle were withdrawn to the north side of the river, and peace reigned again. This was the beginning of a long series of annoying circumstances, and much friction and ill feeling between officers of the Company and the settlers resulted.
The next incident was of a far more serious and alarming nature. On May 1, 1849, Patkanim, the Snoqualmie chief, who had driven Glasgow and Rabbeson from Whidby Island the year previous, appeared at the fort accompanied by a hundred or more of the members of his tribe, and some other warriors from neighboring tribes. They were in war
* See Appendix II., p. 507.
459
OF AN AMERICAN STATE
paint and armed. They pretended that they had come to inquire into the treatment by Lahalet, a Nisqually chief, of the daughter of one of their own sub-chiefs whom he had married, and punish him, if there was occasion to do so. They camped near the fort, and their appearance was so threatening that precautions were quickly taken to guard against an attack. Patkanim was invited inside the fort for a conference, while the other Indians were given tobacco to smoke the pipe of peace. They received it very ungra- ciously, some of them wanting to know if it had been poisoned and refusing to touch it until Wren, one of the employees of the Company whom they knew well, had smoked or chewed some of it in their presence. On account of this conduct two extra guards were stationed at the gate, with orders to let no more Indians in. It was the noon hour, nobody was at work, and all had plenty of time to observe what the In- dians were doing. Three or four white men, most or all of whom were American settlers, who were at the fort on business, were outside the gate, and apparently suspected no danger, until a shot was fired by one of the guards. Some of the Indians then came running toward them, and they retreated to the fort, but keeping their faces toward the Indians. As they neared the gate a scuffle took place be- tween the guards and the Indians, in which guns were clubbed and knives drawn, and a gun was dropped by some- one in such a way that the gate could not be closed until it was removed. By this time a good many shots had been exchanged, the firing was becoming general and the Indians were showing signs of great excitement. Before the gate could be opened so as to admit those who were struggling to reach it, and closed again, Mr. Leander C. Wallace, an American settler, had been killed and Mr. Lewis had
460
THE RISE AND PROGRESS
narrowly escaped a similar fate, one Indian bullet having gone through his coat and vest and another grazed his shoul- der. One Indian was killed and two others wounded.
As soon as the gate was closed the bastions of the fort were manned, but the Indians had fled to their canoes. Pat- kanim had found his way outside the fort, while the firing was going on, and with his braves made good his escape. There seems to be no doubt that he had succeeded in inciting his warriors and some of the neighboring tribes, to begin a war of extermination on the white settlers, and that this was intended to be the beginning of it. His plan was to surprise the fort, get possession of its supplies, and particularly of the ammunition it contained, and then with so much plunder to distribute as subsidies among his own and other tribesmen, it would be easy to unite them, and he would be their chief. The settlers were widely scattered, and unprepared for defense. They could be slaughtered at his convenience. They would make little if any resist- ance; they would be driven out; their fire ships would be no longer dreaded, and all they possessed would be his.
The failure of his attack on the fort naturally disarranged his plans and disappointed his expectation. Nevertheless he sent word to the settlers that if they would leave all their goods, they would be allowed to take themselves out of the country without molestation. But this privilege, so gra- ciously offered, was not accepted.
Within two hours after the Indians had departed a mes- senger was dispatched to Vancouver with an account of the disturbance. The same messenger bore a letter to Gover- nor Lane from Simmons, who was at the fort while the shoot- ing was going on. This letter contained an account of what had happened, and a request for protection for the
461
OF AN AMERICAN STATE
settlements. The governor no sooner received it than he came at once to the Sound, escorted by five soldiers of the mounted rifle regiment, commanded by Lieut. Hawkins. He found the settlers already preparing for defense by build- ing block houses. Two of these were nearly completed, one at Olympia and one on the Cowlitz, and settlers were remov- ing their families to them. He recommended that others be built where there were people to use them, and promised to send soldiers at an early day to aid in their protection. This he could do for the steam transport Massachusetts had now arrived, bringing two companies of artillery, under command of Major Hathaway, who had already established a post at Fort Vancouver, renting ground and buildings for the purpose from the Hudson's Bay Company. Upon his return to Oregon City the governor sent a letter to Dr. Tolmie asking him to notify the Indians that troops had arrived in sufficient numbers to protect the settlers, and pun- ish any who should commit further depredations. He asked that the Company would cooperate with the territorial government in preventing trouble with the Indians, and to this end that it would hereafter refuse to sell them either arms or ammunition.
In his first message to the legislative assembly of the new territory, which convened at Oregon City on July 16, 1849, Governor Lane reviewed the Indian disturbances at Waiilat- pu, where Marcus Whitman, his wife, and others had been massacred, and more recently at Nisqually, where Wallace had been killed. In neither case, as yet, had the murderers been brought to justice. But the Cayuses, who had been responsible for the slaughter at Waiilatpu, had been shown that the settlers would not quietly submit to such outrages, and that they were able to visit swift punishment upon those
462
THE RISE AND PROGRESS
who perpetrated them. He promised to still further chas- tise them when the mounted rifle regiment, which the govern- ment was sending to garrison posts in and along the route to Oregon, should arrive, which would be at no very distant day. Demand would also be made upon the Snoqual- mies, to deliver up the murderers of Wallace for trial, and if they refused the tribes would be held responsible.
But his plans for dealing with the latter tribe were inter- fered with in a most unexpected way. At the time of his own appointment as governor, and superintendent of Indian affairs in the territory, or soon thereafter, three subagents had been appointed, who were to report to him, and be sub- ject to his direction. Only two of these, Robert Newell and J. Quinn Thornton, had qualified, and the governor had divided the territory into two districts, assigning Newell to the southern and Thornton to the northern half. Late in July Subagent Thornton visited the Sound and spent some time in collecting information in regard to the various tribes, their numbers, habits, characteristics and relations with each other. Much to the governor's surprise, since he had given him no instructions about the matter, nor authority to do anything in regard to it, Thornton reported, a few weeks later, that immediately upon his arrival he had pro- ceeded to investigate the killing of Wallace, and had sent messengers to Patkanim advising him to arrest the offenders and deliver them to Capt. Hill, and as an inducement had promised him eighty blankets in case the murderers were given up within three weeks. He also reported that, in case the guilty parties were not given up within three weeks, he had authorized Capt. Hill to double the reward offered:
This was in effect offering a premium for murder, and the governor repudiated the whole arrangement, but not until
463
OF AN AMERICAN STATE
the murderers had been surrendered and the price paid. In reporting the case to the Indian Office Govenor Lane said : "In my instructions to Mr. Thornton, I said nothing about the murder of Wallace, nor did I intend that he should interfere in the premises, as it was my intention, on the arrival of the troops at Nisqually, to visit the Sound and demand the murderers, and make the Indians know that they should give them up for punishment, and that hereafter all outrages should be promptly punished, being well satis- fied that there is no mode of treatment so appropriate as prompt and severe punishment for wrongdoing. It is bad policy, under any consideration, to hire them to make repara- tion, for the reasons, to wit: First. It holds out induce- ments to the Indians for the commission of murder by way of speculation; for instance, they would murder some American, await the offering of a large reward for the apprehension of the murderers; this done, they would deliver up some of their slaves as the guilty parties, for whom they would receive ten times the amount that they would other- wise get for them. Second. It has a tendency to make them underrate our ability and inclination to chastise by force, or make war upon them for such conduct, which, in my opinion, is the only proper method of treating them for such offenses."
This disagreement between the governor and subagent led to the latter's resignation. His colleague, Mr. Newell, subsequently went to the gold mines in California, and Gov. Lane was left to manage the Indian affairs of the territory alone. He began at once by making preparations to have the murderers of both the Whitman party and of Wallace brought to trial and punished, and this was accomplished before the year ended or soon after the new year began.
464 RISE AND PROGRESS OF AN AMERICAN STATE
With the return of the goldseekers, with their gold dust, and the news they brought of new opportunities for prof- itable effort, that were offering from the southward, the settlers began to engage in new undertakings. They no longer confined themselves to improving their claims, to shaving shingles for the Hudson's Bay Company or to saw- ing lumber, and cracking wheat for their own use at Simmons' mill. Trade with the outside world, a very small part of it as yet, it is true, was opening to them, and the advantage of being on tidewater, about which they had long dreamed, but of which they as yet knew but little, were about to be realized, and hope was high within them.
Five full years had now passed since the arrival of the first settlers in the country north of the Columbia. These had been years full of privation, but none greater than they had looked forward to from the first. They had spied out the land and found it indeed "a good land and a large," and they were content with it. They had fixed their homes in it when its sovereignty was in doubt, but now their own flag floated over it, and its right to float there none disputed. The government whose boundaries they had helped to extend so far, was reaching out to protect them, and the future seemed full of promise.
CHAPTER XXXIV. THE GREAT MIGRATION.
T HE great migration by which the Coast States were settled was now well begun. The three or four hundred persons of which the first trains were composed in 1842 and '43, had now swelled to many thousands. In the eight years since the first con- siderable party had crossed the Missouri River, fully a hun- dred thousand settlers had come to the coast. The census of 1850 showed a total population of 13,294 in Oregon, including the Hudson's Bay employees and settlers, 1,049 of whom were north of the Columbia. The population of California was 92,597, practically all of whom, except the original Mexican inhabitants, had come in since the dis- covery of gold, two years earlier, at Sutter's Fort. California became a State in 1850, without ever having had a territorial government. During the next ten years nearly 340,000 people crossed the continent, and in the nine years following, before the completion in 1869 of the first Pacific railroad, fully 200,000 more had come to join them. The total popu- lation of California, Oregon and Washington by the census of 1870 was 675,125 souls. In addition to all this the report of new gold discoveries at Pike's Peak in 1859 had given a fresh impetus to this westward movement, and the census of 1870 showed a total population of 193,258 in Colorado and Nevada and the new territories of Utah, Idaho and Wyoming.
The transfer of such a vast number of people, in so short a time, from one side of the continent to the other, across an intervening wilderness, two thousand miles in extent, marks this as one of the great migrations of the human family. Others may perhaps have exceeded it in volume. Impelled by a desire for plunder, or under the influence of religious fervor, greater numbers may have moved from one region
468
THE RISE AND PROGRESS
to another, but never before had so many people gone so far and in so short a time, for the peaceful purpose of sub- duing a wilderness and making themselves homes. We do not know how many Huns followed Attila into Europe, how many Goths invaded Rome, nor how many enthusiasts followed the standards of Godfrey de Bouillon, Raymond and Tancred to the Holy Land in the first and greatest crusade-doubtless the estimates we have are greatly exag- gerated-but we do know that three thriving States, and three promising territories, on this coast, were peopled within the short space of twenty-five years, by more than 750,000 souls, who traveled farther than the crusader ever wandered in Europe and Asia, farther than Napoleon marched in the Moscow campaign, and all the way through a country that yielded little or nothing for their subsistance. The Hun and the crusader came with sword and spear to conquer and lay waste, to subsist upon the country while they could, and finally to be driven from it by violence, even as they had taken it. This modern host came with no panoply of war; it was not an army with banners, going forth conquering and to conquer; it moved to no beat of drum, and no bugle or trumpet blast was required to inspire it to action. The settler came to conquer by the arts of peace; he brought with him his flocks and his herds, small though they were, his wife and his little ones; he sought to despoil no one; he asked for nothing but what his own strong arms might win for him by honest toil; he was content to be neighbor to the savage and fellow with the wild beast for a time, if by so doing he might possess the land and make himself a home.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.