USA > Washington > History of Washington; the rise and progress of an American state, Vol. IV > Part 19
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The newspapers and people of Oregon joined this opposi- tion. The attempt to change the ancient name of the majes- tic mountain was declared to be nothing less than sacrilege. It was simply a scheme of a lot of real estate boomers and speculators to turn a great world land mark into an adver- tisement-to reduce sublimity itself to the level of a sign- board. The name Tacoma was nothing but the invention of a dreamer-a brilliant dreamer doubtless, but a dreamer nevertheless. It had never been the Indian name of the mountain. The Indians had no names for mountains, or rivers or other land marks distinguishing one from another. To them a mountain was a mountain, and a river a river, and that was all there was of it. A primrose by a river's
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brim, a yellow primrose was to them, and nothing more.
The newspapers of Tacoma,-of which there were two- and the people of the town, stood sturdily for the change, and made such a fight for it as they were able. The two papers were issued only weekly as yet, but in time as the town grew and prospered, and daily editions appeared, the battle raged hotly. The Indians were appealed to for evi- dence by both sides, and, after their custom, generally furnished something that was satisfactory to both. Edward Huggins, last of the Hudson's Bay factors, who had lived for thirty years among them, declared he had never heard them speak of the mountain by any other name than "le monte," which was the Chinook name for it. But Mrs. Huggins, who was a daughter of John Work, and had been born on the coast, had been told by Old Schlousin, or Schlouskin, that the mountain's Indian name was Tachkomah, "but he couldn't give any further information as to why it was so named, other than that anything, or everything in the shape of a mountain, or large mound covered with snow, was named Tach-komah, or Tacobah."* They also pronounced it Tahoma or Tacobet according to their several peculiarities of dialect.
The advocates of the Indian name also attacked the name Rainier in their turn. They insisted that it was not the name Vancouver had given the mountain, because he spelled it Regnier; that Regnier or Rainier was a person of no conse- quence anyway; that he never had seen the mountain, and that he was a foreigner whose name ought not to be per- petuated by one of the grandest monuments on the American continent. The battle thus waged in time attracted the
*Edward Huggins, Mss.
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attention of the whole country. The board on geographic names at Washington was appealed to in due course, and its decision was thought to be of so much importance that committees were sent from the coast to argue the matter. It decided in favor of Rainier, but the contention did not end there, and it still continues more or less fitfully, but none the less interestingly.
In all this controversy, the best evidence in existence to support Winthrop's representation as to the name, has never been cited. George Gibbs, who was associated with General Stevens in his railroad survey, and during the time he was treating with the Indians, and afterwards served with the boundary commission, during all of which time he gave much attention to the study of the Indian languages, prepared for the Smithsonian Institution vocabularies of twenty-one of these laguages, which were published by that institution in 1877* four years after Gibbs' death. Among the vocabu- laries is one of the "Nisquali" language in which the word Ta-kob appears, with the definition "the name of Mount Rainier." In the vocabulary of the Winatsha (Wenatchee) language, the word T'koma is given, which is defined as "Snow peak." From this it appears that the word, or some- thing like it, appears in the Indian languages on both sides of the mountains, but nearest in the form in which it is now used in that of the eastern side. We may infer from this that Winthrop got the word from his Indian guide, "Loo- low-can the frowsy, son of Owhi the horse thief," who es- corted him from Fort Nisqually across the range. He does not say he learned the Indian name when he first saw the mountain, although we naturally infer that he did, or soon
* Contributions to North American Ethnology, Vol. I. Government Printing Office, 1877.
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after. But the Clallams, to which tribe the Duke of York and others who paddled him up the Sound from Port Town- send, belonged, do not have the word in their language, and he could not therefore, get it from them. Neither was he likely to get it at Fort Nisqually, where, as Huggins says, it was never heard. It seems certain therefore, that he got it from his guide, and probably at the time he stopped on the trail to get the grand view of the mountain which he describes so rapturously at this point on his journey. The guide was doubtless the son of a Wenatchee mother, as a chief of Owhi's importance would have wives from several neighboring tribes, and it was from her he obtained it.
It is frequently asserted that the word means nourishing breast, in allusion to the numerous rivers that have their beginnings in the glaciers of the mountain, and flow from it through the fertile valleys of the western part of the state, but this is purely the fancy of white people. The Indians of the coast have no such poetic ideas. To them Tacoma, T'koma, Tahoma, Tacoba or Tacobet, or however they may pronounce it in their several dialects, is simply a snow or ice covered peak; it means that and that only.
The word ko as Gibbs spells it, in the Nisqually language, means water. T'Kope in the Chinook jargon is snow, or anything white. Sir George Simpson, in his report to the directors of the Hudson's Bay Company of his trip to the coast in 1841, only recently published,* mentions a river Tacom in Alaska near Fort Simpson. It probably has some allusion to snow or ice. Ko is the root of the word and it is more or less common to all the languages of the Salish tribes.
*American Historical Review, October 1908.
CHAPTER LV. CIVIL AFFAIRS.
E LISHA P. FERRY became governor of the terri- tory in April 1872. He was the greatest of all the territorial governors, Stevens alone excepted, and held office longest, serving through two full terms of four years each.
He was a native of Michigan, and studied law there and in Fort Wayne, Ind., being admitted to the bar in 1845, at the age of twenty. Then he went to Waukegan, Ill., a small city on the shore of Lake Michigan, a short distance north of Chicago, where he resided until 1869. He was the first mayor of the town, twice presidential elector, a member of the constitutional convention of 1861, and afterwards bank commissioner. When the civil war began he served for a time as assistant adjutant general, and helped materially in organizing and equipping many of the earlier Illinois regiments, and getting them ready for the field. While engaged in this service he made the acquaintance of Captain Ulysses S. Grant, who was appointed colonel of the 21st Regiment while assisting in the work of the adjutant general's office, and when the colonel afterwards became general and finally president, he gave Ferry all his appointments. He was first made surveyor general, and with that appointment he came to the territory in 1869, serving in that office until appointed governor.
Governor Ferry possessed all the acquirements, as well as the natural qualities that go to make a good executive. He was a good lawyer, and a good business man, prudent, tact- ful, painstaking in thinking as well as in action, and possessed rare good judgment and great firmness of character. But two events occurred during his eight years in the executive office that called for the exercise of these qualities in any conspicuous or unusual way. When his first term began
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the country was generally prosperous. Development was progressing slowly, but it seemed probable that it would soon advance more rapidly, and the settlers were hopeful. Rail- road building, long hoped for had begun, and the line from the Columbia to the Sound was nearing completion. There was no apparent reason why it should not continue until the Sound was connected with the older settled regions of the East. But in 1873 work was suspended and the whole country suffered a period of financial depression, the effects of which were wide spread and more or less disastrous. The people in Washington suffered less than those in most other parts of the country, but the advancement they had looked for and hoped for was postponed. New settlers arrived but slowly, and it was not until Governor Ferry had entered upon his second term that business returned to something like normal conditions, and prosperity began to smile once more upon the territory.
He had been scarcely more than half a year in the executive office when news was received that the San Juan boundary question had been settled by the arbitrator to whom it had been referred, and within a month after the news arrived, and as soon as possible after it had been officially communicated to the authorities at Victoria, the British marines who had been stationed on the island since the time of General Scott's visit, were withdrawn. On leaving they cut down the flag pole from which their colors had been displayed for more than a dozen years, and each member of the company, or most of them carried away a piece of it as a souvenir. This led to some unfavorable comment among the American settlers, who fancied that the pole had been destroyed solely in order that the stars and stripes might never be floated from it. In time the newspapers of the territory encouraged the
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ill feeling thus started, and added to it by remarks that were none too well founded.
Soon after receiving official notice that the boundary question had been decided, Governor Ferry, on December 23d, visited the island, for the purpose of reestablishing the civil authority, in place of the divided military authority which had so long controlled there. He learned from the deputy inspector of customs stationed on the island, that some of the British residents were alarmed, fearing that their claims on which most of them had made valuable improvements, would be taken from them. The governor did what he could to reassure these people, informing them that all who had taken their claims previous to 1846, if there were any such, were fully protected by the treaty, and that the others would, under the law, be required to become American citizens, or their claims might be contested by those who were citizens. This most of them already under- stood, and had sent a request to the clerk of the district court that he would visit the island and receive their declarations. But some of them taking counsel from their fears, or perhaps becoming alarmed at the comments made by individuals and the newspapers on the flag pole incident, appealed to the authorities at Victoria, reporting that "Governor Ferry had decided the British subjects must take the oath of alle- giance or loose their claims." These complaints were referred to the British minister in Washington, and by him laid before our secretary of state, who called upon the governor by telegraph, to explain. This he did in a letter of January 25, 1873, stating exactly what he had communicated unoffi- cially to these anxious claim holders, and added that he had subsequently remembered that a question might arise between the Northern Pacific Railroad Company and some of them-
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as a portion of the island was within the limits which had been withdrawn from settlement by order of the secretary of the Interior-until the boundary of the land grant had been determined. As this order had been made in October, while the rights of the claimants could only attach at the time their declarations were made, he had written to the inspector of customs on the island, suggesting that he give this information to all who might be interested, in order that they might take such steps as seemed advisable, to pro- tect themselves.
This action of the governor resulted in a revocation of the order withdrawing the lands, in which some of these claimants were interested, from entry or sale, and the adjust- ment of all just claims on the part of those who were willing to comply with the law, to their satisfaction.
Governor Ferry found the financial affairs of the territory in some confusion on taking charge, and he immediately applied himself to their correction. The laws for the assess- ment and collection of taxes were still crude and imperfect. Several of the counties were negligent in the matter of paying over the share of taxes due the territory. Some had been delinquent for several years, and the aggregate amount due from these was nearly $13,000. By this delinquency the counties not in default were compelled to pay some part of the interest accruing on warrants issued in anticipation of this delinquent balance, which was wrong and unjust, and the governor urged the legislature to give the matter atten- tion at once, so that the injustice might be corrected, and all the counties compelled to contribute equitably to the support of the territorial government.
But the legislature did not immediately give it the atten- tion it deserved, and the governor was compelled to refer to
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it in several subsequent messages. In 1879 these delinquent taxes amounted to $69,509.79, and the governor in his last message insisted that legislation that would enforce payment was imperatively necessary, and it was as a result of this insistence that the trouble was finally removed. Four years later Governor Newell reported that the amount due from delinquent counties was less than $7,000.
Up to this time there had been no arrangement for equaliz- ing assessments as between the several counties, and the governor called attention to this matter, but it was not until he had reminded the legislature a second time that a board of equalization was finally provided for. The law provided that property should be assessed at its full value, but while some counties obeyed it in a reasonable way, others made their assessments much lower, and so avoided payment of their just proportion of the territorial revenue. The assess- ments themselves showed how these last mentioned counties were evading their just share of the territorial burdens. That for 1875 showed a decrease of $896,335 in the value of pro- perty in fourteen counties, as compared with the assessment of 1873. In eight counties the assessment for 1875 showed an increase of $1,283,739. It was apparent that property was not decreasing in value in the proportion represented in some counties, or else that it was not increasing at the rate shown by the assessment in others. Grave injustice was therefore being done somewhere, and the only means of correcting it was through a board of equalizers.
The governor also pressed upon the attention of the legis- lature, the desirability of creating a board of immigration. The manifest want of the territory was population, and one of the best instrumentalities for securing it would be found in such a board, which should be especially charged to make
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known throughout the eastern states and Europe, the exhaust- less resources of the territory, and to procure, so far as pos- sible, cheap transportation for all who would come to it. Such a board, if provided only with very moderate means, would do much to make known to the world at large the abundant resources of our soil, the wealth of our forests, our limitless deposits of coal, the advantages of our commerce, and the attractiveness of our climate.
At that time the belief prevailed very generally throughout the eastern states, that the territory, particularly its western part, was not adapted to agriculture, and that it was far behind the other territories in argicultural development and production. This belief, a board of immigration could do very much to remove, as facts to prove the contrary were abundant. There were in 1873 more than 192,000 acres of improved farm land in the territory, as shown by the census of 1870. This was more than any other of the nine . territories had shown, and when it was remembered that New Mexico had almost four times the number of inhabitants of Washington, that Utah had more than three times, and Colorado nearly twice as many, while Washington was the smallest in area of them all, its advanced position from an agricultural point of view, became strikingly apparent.
The importance of this recommendation, like others, did not immediately impress itself upon the legislature, and it was not until 1877 that a board was provided for. Even then only $150 was appropriated to carry on its work, and with this small sum of course very little could be done. The work however, was started, and in time was conducted in a fairly efficient way.
Owing to the depressed conditions which everywhere prevailed, settlement of the territory proceeded very slowly.
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During 1871-2 a total of only 3,385 entries were made at the three land offices, in Olympia, Vancouver, and Walla Walla. The entries for the two succeeding years at the Van- couver offices were not reported, but at the other two there were only 548. But as the prevailing depression passed away, and business gradually returned to a normal condition, immigration revived, and from 1875 to 1879 the number of new settlers arriving each year was considerably increased, and in his last message, Governor Ferry was able to con- gratulate the legislature upon the fairly prosperous condition of the territory.
The legislature which convened in 1873, the first under Governor Ferry's administration, passed the first railroad law enacted in the territory. It provided generally that rates should be reasonable, and that one patron should not be charged more than another for a similar service rendered. An act to encourage the construction of railroads was also passed, which provided that only so much of any line under construction should be taxed as was operated, and that no road should be taxed until at least fifteen miles was com- pleted and in operation. This act was evidently intended to be helpful to the enterprises in which the people of Olympia, Seattle and Walla Walla were then preparing to engage.
This legislature also passed a law to encourage irrigation in Yakima County. It provided a method by which rights of way for irrigating ditches should be acquired, and rights to water secured, as well as for the settlement of all contro- versies that might arise in regard to either matter. By the time the next legislature met the farmers had become very much interested in the organization of granges, and it passed an act providing for their incorporation. It authorized the corporate bodies to engage in almost every business as well
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as farming, and indicated that the farmers of that day were entertaining the hope that they might in time control every- thing that was not then conducted to their satisfaction. By this legislature the city of Tacoma was incorporated, on November 12, 1875. It also passed a general dyking law, and a curious act providing that any person who wished to do so, might sell his property by lot, provided he would pay ten per cent. of the sum received into the road fund, to be used to aid in building a road through the Snoqualmie Pass.
In his message to the legislature in October 1877, Gover- nor Ferry urged a revision of the revenue law. Under the system then in use no money reached the treasury for any year until after it had expired. Sometimes it did not come in for eighteen months or more after the assessment was made. This made it necessary for the state to pay out a considerable sum for interest, sometimes at the rate of ten per cent., all of which might be saved by a change in the law which would bring the territory to a cash basis. He also advised that a memorial should be prepared, urging Congress to make an appropriation to remove obstructions from the navigable rivers of the territory. In many places these seriously interfered with navigation. They were to some extent being removed by private enterprise. But this was a burden that individuals should not bear, and as the general government would sometime aid the work, as it was aiding it elsewhere, it should be urged to begin it at the earliest moment possible.
The railroad question was now commanding universal attention, and there was great diversity of opinion, particu- larly in regard to extending the time within which the North- ern Pacific should complete its main line to the Sound, or loose its land grant. Opposition to extension at this time
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had been strengthened by the course the company was pursuing, in regard to the sale of lands which it had already acquired. By the conditions of its grant the minimum price of these lands had been fixed at $2.50 per acre, and many held that it should not charge more than this, as otherwise settlement would be retarded. But the company was demanding much higher prices in many cases, and it was therefore held to be delaying settlement rather than encourag- ing it. The governor urged that the time limit should be rea- sonably extended, but not without conditions. The company should be required to make a beginning on its construction work, and to complete a minimum portion of its tracks each year. This he thought would be a fair requirement, and by adopting it the company would be encouraged to begin and complete the construction of its Cascade Division, a matter which he considered of the utmost importance, since it would in a measure help to defeat the effort then making to make Portland the general western terminus of the road.
The legislature of 1875 passed an act to aid the construc- tion of the Seattle and Walla Walla, now called the Seattle and Colfax Railroad. It provided that King County might assist the undertaking to the extent of $100,000, Walla Walla County $100,000, Yakima $50,000, Columbia $75,000, Whitman $80,000, Kitsap $10,000, Stevens, which then included Spokane and all the north eastern part of the territory of the present day, $20,000, Klikitat $10,000. It also passed an act to prevent and punish gambling, another to encourage the cultivation of oysters, and still another to regulate fishing.
In his last message in 1879, the governor complained that the enactment of important laws was so generally deferred till the closing hours of the legislative session that it was
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difficult, if not impossible, for the governor to fairly consider them before determining whether or not to give them his approval. The preceding legislature had enacted ninety-six laws during the last twelve hours of its session. The law allowed the governor five days after the adjournment, within which he must determine whether or not he should give or withhold his approval of all these acts. It was not possible to have these bills properly engrossed, and many of them came to him full of erasures and interlineations, the exact effect and meaning of which it was sometimes very difficult to determine. One of two courses was open to him under such circumstances-one was to withhold his approval, and the other to approve without a proper understanding, neither of which was very desirable. He had generally followed the latter course in regard to most of the measures, but expressed the hope that the legislature would so far as possible, make it unnecessary for him to continue to do this.
He was now able to congratulate the legislature and the people of the territory, on the fact that its finances were in a sound condition, although the revenue law still needed some slight revision, the nature of which he carefully pointed out.
So far in the history of the territory the counties had paid the cost of prosecuting criminals. This he thought was unfair, and he recommended the enactment of a law provid- ing that the cost of prosecution henceforth should be borne by the territory.
The territorial convicts were still held in county jails, and were cared for under contracts with the sheriffs, until 1877, when the legislature provided that the governor should enter into contract with some responsible person to erect a penitentiary, somewhere within the limits of Thurston County, in which he should keep and maintain all the
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prisoners for a term of six years. He was to employ them meantime at any suitable work that could be found for them, and be responsible for the proper care of any who might be sick, and recapture any who might escape. The more desperate criminals might be compelled to wear shackles, permanently fastened to their limbs with rivets, to be removed neither by night nor day. Under the act making these pro- visions, Governor Ferry entered into contract with William Billings of Olympia, who had long been sheriff of Thurston County, to build such a building as was required. It was located at Seatco. It was two stories high, and was con- structed of planks firmly spiked together. The lower story was without openings of any sort, and was furnished with rude cells, in which the prisoners were kept at night; the upper story was occupied by the guards. Entrance to it was obtained only by a stairway outside the building, which led to the second story. By another on the inside the pris- oners descended to their cells. The building was surrounded by a stout stockade.
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