USA > Washington > History of Washington; the rise and progress of an American state, Vol. III > Part 2
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When news of this massacre reached the Dalles, Major Rains, then in command of the military post which had been established there, dispatched Captain Haller, Lieutenant McFeely and Dr. Suckle, with twenty-six enlisted men, to punish the murderers if possible, and provide protection for any belated emigrants who might still be on the trail. On the march they were overtaken by Captain Olney, a brother of Judge Olney of Oregon, who had started out in command of a party of thirty volunteers, and the number had been increased by several emigrants who had joined them on the march.
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THE RISE AND PROGRESS
As rations had not been provided for so great a number, and the supply train which followed them was delayed on the way, both regulars and volunteers were compelled to subsist for some days upon smoked salmon, and the horses captured from the Indians. Upon arriving at the scene of the massacre, or near it, the command arrested four Indians who were pointed out as having taken part in it. They were examined before a court of inquiry, organized for the pur- pose, where they explained what had taken place and the share that each had taken in the massacre. All were found guilty. One of them tried to escape, and was shot by the guard, and the other three were taken to the spot where their bloody work had been done, and hanged on a gallows erected close to the melancholy mound that covered the charred and blackened bones of their victims. Later a small party of the hostiles were captured and two of them were shot while trying to escape. All the others fled on the approach of the troops to their camp, abandoning their lodges, in which a large part of the goods of the murdered party, including clothing and camp outfits, were found. They were pursued with vigor by Captain Olney's volun- teers, but managed to hide their trail so effectually by following the beds of shallow streams for long distances, that pursuit was fruitless, and the main body of the murderers escaped.
The train with which Mary Hagar, afterwards Mrs. George Wanch, came was attacked and eight of the party killed and scalped. Among the number was Margaretta Kiel, a cous- in of Mrs. Wanch, whose father was captain of the train. She had very long and beautiful hair. A few days after the massacre, a party of Indians came up with the train, and one of them had this girl's scalp fastened to his shoulder,
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with the long and beautiful hair wound about his neck. Capt. Keil was one of the first to recognize the bloody trophy. He shot the Indian and recovered it, but was himself wounded in the encounter, and a brother of Mrs. Wanch was killed.
This party was almost wholly composed of Germans, who had crossed the ocean only a few years earlier and settled in Missouri. Some of the company were musicians and they brought their instruments with them. This was perhaps the first brass band to cross the plains. One of their wagons also brought a strange burden. A brother of Mrs. Wanch was taken sick and died while the party were preparing for their long trip. As a dying request he begged the family not to bury him and leave him alone in the country they were leaving, and the father promised that he should not be left there. So a metallic coffin was procured and the body carefully sealed up in it. It was brought through safely and buried in the Willapa Valley, where the family spent the first year after their arrival. They afterwards removed to Oregon .*
After crossing the Missouri the travelers were beyond the reach of the law and its protection. It became necessary that they should be a law unto themselves. Each train made its own regulations, and appointed those who were to enforce them. In this way good order in most cases was maintained throughout the journey. Property and life were protected, and offenders both of the lesser and greater sort, promptly punished. The "vile outcasts" of whom Parkman speaks, and some others whose characters and habits were not of the best, intruded themselves among those to whom their company was not wholly agreeable, but they were usually promptly disposed of. If they were
* Sept. 23, 1892.
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THE RISE AND PROGRESS
simply lazy, if their habits were filthy, or if they became abusive or disagreeable, they were given notice to quit the train, and if they did not go promptly a few rifles were pro- duced, and the exact number of minutes was fixed beyond which their presence would not be tolerated. They rarely exceeded the time limit in getting out of range. If they insulted the women, the ox whips of the party were applied with excellent effect. If the offence was a particularly griev- ous one the offender was first tied to a wagon wheel, where every whip in the train was applied to his back and shoulders, after which he was turned loose and as many more lashes were laid on as could be administered without too great effort, before he got out of reach. All capital offences came strictly under the jurisdiction of Judge Lynch, but so far as known trials were always orderly and conducted with due decorum. A jury was impaneled, the accused was heard in his own defence, or by counsel, if any could be found to defend him. The jury then deliberated and returned its verdict. If unfavorable, the guilty party was promptly shot or hanged. J. W. McCarty saw one of these executions at Council Bluffs .* An unmarried man had murdered and robbed his employer of a considerable sum of money. The money, in bank bills, was found on the accused when arrested, and was identified by the dead man's partner. The trial took place the evening after the murder, and execution fol- lowed immediately. C. B. Talbot says one man in his train was burned at the stake in 1849,* but what his offence was he does not say. Mrs. Nancy Thomas says the people in her train in 1852 were surprised one day, when on the upper waters of the Sweetwater, to find a white child, with flaxen hair and very light blue eyes, in the keeping of some
* "Tacoma Ledger," Oct. 16, 1892.
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Indians who were camped near the trail. A little farther on they found more Indians who had four other white children, all very small, and which had apparently all belonged to the same family. Upon investigation they found that a man and his wife had been murdered by a man they had employed to drive one of their teams, who had robbed them of their money and given their goods, or most of them, and their little children to the Indians. A search for the murderer, among the trains in advance, was imme- diately organized. The older children were able to give such a description of him that he was easily identified. With- in a few days he was captured and hanged. The execu- tioners did not wait to give the body burial, or even to take it down from the gibbet, but placing a card near it indicating the enormity of his crime, they left it to the crows and the elements .*
Edward Hanford's family found a man on the trail one day who claimed to have been abandoned by the people he had been traveling with, because he was sick and no longer able to work. He was a woe-begone creature, and was evidently in distress. Mrs. Hanford had for three or four weeks previously been nursing a woman who had typhoid fever, but she had then so far recovered that she could be taken to another wagon. A bed had been fitted up for her, by suspending it from the bows which supported the wagon cover, in such a way that it swung back and forth as the wagon rocked, but without hitting its sides. The sick woman had found it very comfortable. Now that she no longer required it, it was given to this sick stranger, who had no claim of any sort on the family, except that he was a human being in sore need. Mrs. Hanford and her husband nursed
* "Tacoma Ledger," Nov. 13, 1892.
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THE RISE AND PROGRESS
him back to health, and when he was strong enough they hired him to help drive their cattle. Not long afterwards they were awakened one night by an unusual noise, and found that the side of their tent had been cut open and a small trunk, in which they had some money, and valuables of various kinds, had been dragged through the opening. They had been awakened just in time to prevent the thieves from making away with it. The tramp whom they had nursed back from sickness to health, and a boy who had come with them thus far as an employee, were the culprits. The latter was forgiven after he had made a confession in which he stated that the tramp, who had given the name of John Christy, had persuaded him to help him in the robbery. The men in the train condemned Christy to be shot, but the women reversed that judgment and he was permitted to escape. Some years later the Hanford family learned that a John Christy, who was probably the same who had attempted to rob them, had been hanged in San Francisco.
Edward Jay Allen saw a man hanged in 1852, who had brutally murdered another who had been in his employ. They had quarreled about one of the thousand things that caused men to lose their temper among such surroundings, and a few days later, when everybody thought the quarrel had been forgotten, the two went out together one afternoon to try and shoot some elk, and the employee never returned. A day or two later search was made for him and his dead body was found. He had been shot in the back, and his head had then been beaten to a pulp with his own gun. The murderer was confronted with the body of his victim and confessed his crime. As there were several trains in the neighborhood, a court and jury were selected from among those who had never known either the murderer or
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his victim. The story of the quarrel and the crime, includ- ing the confession of the accused, were recited. A few of the members of his own train said what they could about the murderer's previous character, and then the jury pronounced him guilty, and sentenced him to be hanged. He pleaded hard for his life; begged that they would inflict any punishment but death; that they would send him out alone on the plains, without food or arms, to make such a fight for life as he might-even that they would cripple him and then let him go. His wife also pleaded for him, and brought her children to add their petitions to hers, but although they were given a respectful hearing their prayer was not granted. The jurors felt that they had a stern duty to perform. They must either ignore the brutal crime, or inflict such punish- ment as the laws with which they were familiar provided, and their own safety as well at that of all other travelers such as they were, required that they should not ignore it. Two wagons were placed close together, facing each other; their poles were erected and tied together at the top, and on this improvised gallows the murderer was hanged by the neck, until he was dead. His widow and children became the wards of the train for the remainder of their journey.
During all the weary weeks of their journey the travelers were tortured by swarms of mosquitoes at night, and at times by swarms of flies by day, that were equally or even more annoying. Poisonous reptiles and equally poisonous insects invaded their camps, and sometimes crept into their beds. The plagues of Egypt seemed to have returned. They were sick and needed medicine and none was to be obtained. Sometimes they required the services of a surgeon, and although there were doctors with some of the trains, many were without them. Hugh Crockett saw a little sickly
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THE RISE AND PROGRESS
boy at Council Bluffs who could no longer walk because of a swollen and badly inflamed knee. Before starting he had been treated by a doctor who thought the leg would have to come off, but the operation had not been performed. The doctor, who was going to Salt Lake, overtook the family while they were waiting to cross the river by the ferry, and it was decided to go on with the operation there. It did not seem possible that the little sufferer would survive it. No anæsthetic was given him; there was none to give. The couch on which he lay was carried outside the tent by two men, who held him while the doctor, with a common butcher's knife and a carpenter's saw, cut the leg off at the thigh. The boy survived, made the long trip in safety and grew to be a healthy man. His name was Stephen Rudell, long a resi-, dent of Thurston County.
Death in all of its terrible forms continually hovered along the way. The exposure of the camp and the trail was fatal to many. That "inevitable despondency" of which Prof. Royce speaks,* as inseparable from the earlier experience of life in camp, and which was intensified by the monotony and solitude of the plains, was with some the beginning of the end. They perished from sheer despair. Some were killed by accidents, and some drowned. Two men in Mrs. Geer's party were drowned in Snake River in 1847; one left a wife and three small children, and the other a wife and six children, the oldest scarcely yet able to be helpful to their widowed mother.t
Many died of diseases, some from drinking the poisonous alkali water, and some simply from the fear of death. During
* "California." American Commonwealths series.
¡ Diary of Mrs. Elizabeth Dixon Smith Geer, Transactions Oregon Pioneer Association, June 1907.
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the terrible cholera years, 1852 and '53, but particularly in 1852, when the plague followed nearly every train until the pure air of the mountains gave them relief from it, deaths occurred almost daily in every party. "It went through the train like a prairie fire," says A. R. Hawk, "and left its victims in unmarked graves on the plains by hundreds. I counted as many as twenty and twenty-five new graves in one day. Of the many large families that the cholera attacked that year, but few reached the end of their journey entire."* "In one camping place," says Meeker, "we counted fifty-odd fresh graves, none of which bore date of more than the previous week." "One day," says Hester E. Davis, "we came across several graves of our own acquaintances, who had started west the year before we did and, as we then first learned, had perished by the way."t "I shall never forget the suffering we experienced," says Thomas S. Law, "nor the marks of suffering left by others who had preceded us, in the form of hundreds of graves, which were in most cases shallow, and nearly all of which had been disturbed by wolves."# Mrs. Norton H. Ellis counted eight graves at one place in 1852, on which the dirt was not yet dry.§ C. B. Talbot says, "A man would drive his team, apparently as well as usual one day, and the next be dead. Everyother tent was a hospital."|| Urban E. Hicks' party found in one place the graves of one woman and her two small children and several men, which had been opened by the wolves or Indians, and the bodies left exposed. They reburied them
' "Tacoma Ledger," Sept. 25, 1892.
t "Tacoma Ledger," July 17, 1892.
# "Tacoma Ledger," July 17, 1892.
§ "Tacoma Ledger," Sept. 25, 1892.
l "Tacoma Ledger," Oct. 16, 1892.
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THE RISE AND PROGRESS
and moved on. "I knew a man," says J. B. Knapp, "driv- ing his team today as usual, and so far as his companions knew, there was nothing the matter with him, but that he did not feel as well as usual, and before morning a corpse. We buried him, yoked up and moved on. Men died leaving wives and children to be cared for by their companions on the journey. I knew one instance where both father and mother died, leaving a family of six children, the eldest a boy just entering his teens, to pursue their journey as they could. I knew of no instance of this kind where the survi- vors were not kindly cared for, and assisted along their jour- ney by their companions." R. Griffith saw a woman with one small child, making her way with her ox team unaided. Her husband had died on the road. "Sad scenes were those," says Mrs. H. E. Davis, "when people were detained by sickness until out of provisions. Often they begged us for food for the starving, and we would share our bread and coffee with them, until finally we had to close our ears to all appeals, to keep enough for ourselves. The further we traveled the more scant and meagre became our fare. Our bread and bacon, coffee and milk came to be our sole food, nothing fresh being obtainable. Our parents were worn out and discouraged, and the children often cried from weari- ness."
Sherwood Bonney's story is a particularly sad one. "On August 4th," he says, "we crossed the Snake River without accident, and, putting our wagons together pursued our way as usual, until 4 o'clock in the afternoon, when my little son, Alvin, was taken violently sick with cholera. Nothing seemed to do him any good, and he died next morning. It was sad, indeed, to lay him down for his last sleep in this wild place, but we had no alternative-the Indians gave us
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no chance to stop-so we must push on to keep out of their way. The others became sick-my brother Timothy Bon- ney, and his little daughter, aged two years. We did all we could for them, but after a few days of suffering they died, on the 8th of August, and we buried them near our path, as well as many others, who were strangers. There was neither comfort by day, nor rest by night. Two of my little boys were very unwell, and it was not wonderful that my dear wife, worn and fatigued with the long journey, and with weary watching and sorrow, should be the next victim. The situation seemed very hard; everybody was frightened at the cholera and the Indians. We could not stop alone, and none were willing to face death and the Indians with us, so we struggled along, sick and sorrowful, until we had crossed the river the second time, and had a hard drive to reach the next camp after dark, where we could get water. That was a dreary and hopeless night, as I watched my dear wife, the companion of my early years, battling with disease and yielding up that hope that had sustained her through many trials. She lingered till about noon next day, August 14, when she breathed her last, and left us almost alone to perform the sad rites of burial. Most of the com- pany had hastened on. Mr. Fisk and August Lewis were, with their wives, kind enough to stop with us until it was over. We buried her on a little mound beneath a tree, and smoothed it down as well as we could lest the Indian might disturb the grave."
Mrs. White and her friends found a family in the Grand Ronde Valley, who had fallen behind the train with which they had been traveling, and were in a most desolate condi- tion. The mother was very sick and could go no further. Her son, a young man, and a little girl were with her, two
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THE RISE AND PROGRESS
other little girls of the family having died a few days previous. "The woman said to me in the morning, when we were going to leave the valley, 'You will not leave me, will you?' and I told her I would not, answering without thinking of the consequences. When our company came to talk it over they decided that provisions were too scarce to think of remaining. Mr. Rice, the son of the dying woman, said for them to go on, and he would let those who would remain have horses, so as to catch the train, so Dr. Spinning, Millie Stewart, Dr. Bartlow, Lecretia Redding and myself stayed with Mrs. Rice. She died that day and we buried her, and started on to catch the company, which we did the next day."
Rev. A. J. Joslyn's party found a man with three children in Burnt River Canyon, the oldest aged about ten years, and the youngest a baby. The mother was dead, and they had lost all their animals but one ox. It was impossible for them to go on, in the condition in which they were, and the father was almost desperate. A collection was taken up and another ox bought for him, which enabled him to pursue his journey. Hundreds of equally pathetic incidents occurred. In one case a little girl, all of whose family were dead, was left to drive the ox team through to the end of the journey. But in every case of this kind the travelers will- ingly gave such aid as they could, and none were abandoned or left entirely desolate.
As the Joslyn party were floating down the Columbia, near the end of their journey, they were forced to land and make camp on the north bank of the river not far from Fort Vancouver, as a storm was coming up. It grew dark, and began to rain soon after they had got their fire started. Another party, none of whom they knew, but who were
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OF AN AMERICAN STATE
making this last stage of their long journey on a raft which they had themselves constructed, soon came to the shore, and the Joslyn party helped them to land. A woman handed Mrs. Joslyn her baby to hold while she procured some necessary articles from the goods on the raft, and as soon as the latter received it, she said to her daughter who was standing at her side, "The baby is dead, and its poor mother does not know it." This was true; the poor infant had died in its mother's arms, while she was watching the struggles of the rowers to reach the shore and save them- selves from the river and the storm. It was necessary to bury it at once. There was nothing at hand from which a coffin could be made. It was difficult, in the thick darkness which prevailed everywhere a few feet from the fire, to find a place suitable for a grave, but by feeling along the rocky bank they found a place where the shale could be scooped out with their hands, and so they made a grave there, and the little one was laid at rest.
For many weary miles, particularly along the Snake River, the road looked smooth and inviting enough ahead of the teams, and yet it was only an interminable series of ruts, which were filled with fine, impalpable dust, in which the oxen sank to the knees and the wagons to their hubs. The sick, who were kept to their beds in the wagons, in this part of the journey suffered terribly. The jolting and rolling of the wagons was torture to them. The thick dust, stirred up by the wheels and the weary feet of the animals and their drivers, nearly suffocated them. The heat was at times intolerable. Often it was impossible to get water to bathe their faces, or cool their parched and fevered lips. The members of the family who were not sick were obliged to walk, so as to relieve the distressed animals as much as
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THE RISE AND PROGRESS
possible, and some thus died within the sound of voices of their own parents or children, and yet alone, and without the clasp of a friendly hand, or a soothing word of solace in the last terrible moment. Colonel E. J. Allen tells of one poor woman who was found dead in her wagon at Fort Boise, and so thickly covered with dust as to show that she had been dead for some hours, and yet her husband and children did not know it until they reached camp. They had been too much exhausted or too negligent to give her attention, even in her dying hour.
And yet in the presence of all this suffering and sorrow, human beings were found who were quite willing to take advantage of the necessities of these sorrowing emigrants in order to make a little money. Colonel Allen tells of one of these who had set up a booth, where he sold bread, flour, bacon, cakes and pies, near the crossing of Snake River at . Fort Boise. Colonel Allen and the Meeker brothers, Ezra and Oliver, established a ferry here and maintained it for some time; until Allen bought his partners out. He heard the emigrants complaining of the prices the man was charg- ing for what he had to sell, but neither he nor they felt called upon to interfere with his business, until a poor widow came along with a family of small children, the oldest a girl of thirteen. Her husband had died during the journey. She was compelled to stop for a few days at the fort to recruit her teams, which were nearly exhausted, and as trains were then numerous all along the trail, the people with whom she had traveled thus far went on without her, knowing that she would find other people who would help her as much as they could, among the trains behind them. But she was nearly out of provisions and had but little money. Her thirteen-year-old girl sought employment of this merchant,
FORT BOIST.
This blockhouse was erected during the Indian war, near the present site of Boistfort in Lewis County. The cut is printed by permission, from the "History of the Puget Sound Country, " by Col. William Farrand Prosser.
THE RUE AND PROGRESS
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21
OF AN AMERICAN STATE
who allowed her a beggarly pittance to bake pies for his booth for a few days, and at the same time charged her mother higher prices than he required grown men to pay for his provisions. This the girl quickly discovered, and made complaint to Allen, or some of the other emigrants who had taken an interest in her case. It required only a statement of her grievances to secure their correction. A party was quickly formed; the booth was visited and its proprietor compelled to make ample restitution to the widow of all, and perhaps more than he had extorted from her-for the emigrants were not disposed to make nice calculations in adjusting matters of this kind-and then he was told to gather up what he had left and make off with it, which he was only too glad to do.
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