USA > Washington > History of Washington; the rise and progress of an American state, Vol. IV > Part 6
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The position of Governor Douglass, a weak one to begin with, was much weakened and embarrassed by the action of those who represented him at the beginning of the con- troversy. Captain Prevost, the British boundary commis- sioner, could find no stronger ground on which to base the British claim to the island, than that the language of the treaty was that the boundary line should run through the channel separating "the continent from Vancouver Island," instead of the usual form of language, by which the smaller body would have been separated from the larger. It was also shown in support of this claim that the British negotiator, in preparing a form of treaty, had at first used language which expressly fixed the line in the Haro Channel, but had subsequently substituted the language quoted, a fact which, as Judge Hanford has well said, proves, if it proves anything, that the negotiator had the Canal De Haro in mind as the
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proper boundary, if the British were to be permitted to hold all of Vancouver Island .* It was fortunate for Douglass, too, that he had for a long time exercised the functions of Chief Factor of the Hudson's Bay Company, as well as those of governor, and he had been rather sharply reminded during the preceding year, in the Fraser River matter, that he had not always clearly distinguished the one from the other. He did not readily lay aside his sense of responsibility for the interests of the Company, but the long exercise of auto- cratic authority, as its chief executive officer, had not unfitted him to govern under the limitations of law and the usages of liberal governments. But there were some about him who did not so accurately discriminate, and, unfortunately for him, they had, at the outset, transformed a petty contro- versy over the killing of a worthless pig into one involving the right of a citizen to the protection of his government. The controversy had been aggravated by the fact that one of these people was closely related to him, and by the further fact that he had gone to the island on board of a British ship-of- war, and returned by the same conveyance. While nothing more than the agents of the Company, they had seemingly spoken in the name of the colonial government, backed by the presence of a British ship-of-war, to make good their threats. Douglass might disavow their connection with his government or his own responsibility for their acts, but he could not expect Harney to know, or the Americans on the island to be- lieve, that the presence of the warship and the agents of the Hudson's Bay Company at the island, at the time of the occur- rence complained of, was a purely accidental circumstance.
Nor did the residents on Vancouver Island understand it more readily, or more clearly than those on this side of the
* Address before the Washington Pioneers, June 7, 1899.
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line. When the provincial parliament met, a spirited debate occurred over the address in reply to the governor's message, in which some of the speakers expressed a wish to know why the troops were not landed; why were troops and ships sent; and why all this expense and show, if only for parade ? "We must defend ourselves," one said, "for the position we occupy today would make the iron monument of Welling- ton weep, and the stony statue of Nelson bend his brow."
"The house would most earnestly impress upon your excellency," the address said as it was finally adopted, "to enforce upon her Majesty's government the necessity of demanding from the government of the United States, not only the immediate withdrawal of those troops, but also strenuously, and at all risks, to maintain her right to the island in question, and also to all other islands in the same archipelago, now so clandestinely, dishonorably and dis- honestly invaded."
But these rhetorical demonstrations on the part of the provincial statesmen ended in nothing serious. They do not appear even to have disturbed the equanimity of the governor, who calmly pursued the course he had marked out for himself from the beginning. The friendly, though not intimate, relations between the people of the territory and those of the colony were not seriously interrupted. Both would, no doubt, have responded promptly to a call to take up arms, but happily there was no occasion for that, and peace soon reigned again, where for a few weeks war had so seriously threatened.
NOTE .- A murder was committed on the island in 1869, while it was still jointly occupied by troops of the United States and Great Britain, and Charles Watts was arrested, indicted and tried at Port Townsend, where he was found guilty and sentenced to death. The indictment charged that the
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crime had been committed "at a place within the sole and exclusive jurisdiction of the United States." Upon review of the case, by the supreme court, a majority of the justices-Greene and Kennedy-sus- tained the contention of defendant's counsel, and held that the prosecution should have been at the suit of the territory, and not at the suit of the United States, and the accused was remanded for another trial. From this ruling Chief Justice Jacobs dissented. Watts was again tried in February 1872, under anindictment charging him with murder committed in the county of Whatcom. He was again convicted and sentenced to death, and his counsel again appealed, claiming that at the time the murder was committed, San Juan Island was not within the civil juris- diction of the courts of Washington Territory. This time the court unanimously affirmed the finding of the court below and Watts was exe- cuted.
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CHAPTER LI. EARLY SETTLERS IN EASTERN WASHINGTON.
STEAMER INDIANAPOLIS.
One of the modern steamboats plying on the Sound.
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S HORTLY after the close of Colonel Wright's suc- cessful campaign against the Indians, in Septem- ber, 1858, General Clarke rescinded Wool's order excluding settlers from the country east of the Cascades, and eastern Washington began at once to regain what it had lost. The first American settlers in the territory had gone there in 1836, but they had all been driven out by the Cayuse war, following the Whitman massacre, and had never been able to return. Ransom Clarke, and possibly one or two other Americans, had taken claims there before the war broke out in 1855, but they, too, had been forced to leave. The small colony of Hudson's Bay people, who had settled along the Walla Walla, and on the Touchet, and Brooke, Bumford & Noble, the cattle-ranchers, had struggled almost heroically to retain their homes, and some part of the little property they had accumulated, but they had been despoiled both by the Indians and the soldiers, during the years of Wool's command, and most of them had been forced to leave the country. Those who had remained were so far impoverished that they were compelled to begin again, with almost as little as when they had first arrived on the ground.
But now that both the Indians and Uncle Sam's army were agreed that the country might be settled, the adventur- ous pioneers began again to find their way to it. The first who came chose claims along the Walla Walla and its branches, and on the Touchet. Not one of them then, or for a considerable time thereafter, suspected that the hill lands were of any value except for pasture. By the end of 1858 Thomas P. Page, James Foster, Charles Russell, J. C. Smith (better known as Sergeant Smith), Christopher Maier, John Singleton, John A. Simms and Joseph McEvoy had taken claims, and by the end of 1859 there were settlers here
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and there along the Touchet, as far as the present city of Dayton in Columbia County .*
In January, 1859, the legislature appointed a new set of county commissioners, and two of them, John Mahan and Walter R. Davis, met in March of that year, on or near the land claim of Lloyd Brooke, which had been designated in the act creating the county in 1854, as the county seat, and completed the organization of the county government.
By that time Simms, with the aid of some capital furnished by A. H. Reynolds and Captain F. T. Dent had built a flour mill, and a few merchants and a blacksmith had established themselves in the vicinity. The place had heretofore been variously called Steptoeville and Wailatpu, but in July, 1859, the commissioners formally named it Walla Walla.
Settlement would have gone on as it had been going on- as it has gone on in all new regions, had this one depended only on agriculture and stock-growing for its chief attrac- tions. But it was not to depend on these alone for a very long time, for a gold discovery was soon after made in the Nez Perce country, lying to the eastward, and an army of gold hunters, similar to that which had flocked through Whatcom and Victoria to the Fraser River in 1858, began its march through the village, leaving behind it, as such an army invariably does, its most practical and thrifty members to become its supply agents. As the discovery of gold had hastened the settlement of California, so it was now to hurry the settlement of Idaho and British Columbia, and Washing- ton was also to be a considerable gainer by it.
* Among the settlers who came in 1859, or earlier, were; R. H. Reigh- art, S. D. Smith, James Galbreath, Lycurgus Jackson, I. T. Reese, E. H. Brown, Wm. B. Kelly, Z. Bonner, J. M. Craigie, Wm. Finch, W. W. Wiseman, W. J. Terry, Wm. McWhirk, J. A. Simons, Thomas Hughes and Augustus Vonhinkle.
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A Nez Perce Indian had strayed down into California, a year or two earlier, and had met with Captain E. D. Pierce, an old prospector, to whom he had told a wonderful story. He, and some members of his tribe, had once wandered into a deep canyon in his own country, whose rocky walls rose so high about them on every side as almost to shut out the light of the sun, except at midday. They wandered so far in it that they were obliged to make their camp, and remain during the night. But they did not sleep, for when it had become quite dark they suddenly saw a bright light, like a gleaming beacon, burst out of the rocky wall, and they could not take their eyes off it. They thought it the eye of the Great Spirit, and were very much afraid. When morning came they found that the light had been caused by a very brilliant white stone, like crystal, but it was so firmly fixed in the rock that they could not remove it with their hands, and thinking it some very great medicine, they did not dare to disengage it by force, and so they left it there, and he had never since gone back to look at it.
Believing this wonderfully brilliant stone to be nothing less than a diamond of untold value, the captain resolved to make search for it, and the Indian promised to guide him to the spot where he had seen it. He accordingly started for Walla Walla, which he reached in the fall of 1859, and remained there all winter. In the spring of 1860, with a party of five others, he started for the Nez Perce country, but the Indians wanted no gold hunters or diamond hunters wandering about their reservation, and they ordered the party to leave. As they were compelled to go, Pierce secured a Nez Perce woman for a guide, and passed over the Lo Lo trail, to the north bank of the Clearwater River, where they went into camp, intending to remain a few days to recruit their
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animals. Here one of the party, named Bassett, made a test of a panful of gravel, and found three cents' worth of fine gold as the result. This was quite satisfactory, and after making further tests, as satisfying to themselves that gold existed there in paying quantity, they returned to Walla Walla, bringing with them about $80 in dust.
Sergeant Smith took a deep interest in this discovery. He tried to induce some of the merchants, and other settlers already on the ground, to help him outfit a party to make further explorations, but succeeded only in inducing Simms and his partners to contribute 1,000 pounds of flour. With this slight assistance, and by putting his own credit to a severe test, he managed to outfit fifteen men, with whom he reached the mines in November, 1860. The Indians threatened to make them some trouble at first, but were quieted without much difficulty, and the party spent the early part of the winter in building log cabins for shelter, and in prospecting under the snow. They were successful, and before spring Smith and two other members of the party made their way back to Walla Walla, on snowshoes, bringing with them $800 in gold dust. This was soon sent down the river to Portland, and thus the Oro Fino gold boom was started.
As soon as the spring of 1861 opened, the rush began. The river steamers and all other means of transportation were taxed to their utmost. Many of the gold seekers brought their outfits from California, or other places where they had been mining; some bought in Portland, but many waited, to make their purchases in Walla Walla, where the merchants early made preparations to supply them. All needed some- thing, when they reached this, the last place where supplies could be obtained, and the merchants were soon doing a
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thriving trade. New merchants and new stocks of goods appeared to help supply the demand, and within a few months the little village became a thriving town, with all the advantages, accessories and vices of a frontier mining camp.
Among the new enterprises in the town was a printing- office and a weekly newspaper, "The Washington States- man," whose earlier numbers were eagerly bought by those who were hungering for news from the mines, and they contained information of the most attractive kind. The Salmon River bars were prospected during the summer of 1861, and found to be very rich. One of the earlier reports published by the "Statesman" said that men were realizing $100 each per day. From one mine owned by Mr. Wiser of Oregon, $2,680 had been taken out in one day with two rockers, and on the day following, $3,360 had been rocked out by the same machines.
Although the winter of 1861-62 was the most severe ever known on the coast, of which there is any record, it did not, for a considerable time, put a stop to the onward march of the " gold hunters" as the "Statesman" called them. In its issue of December 13th, it said: "The tide of emigration to Salmon River flows steadily onward. During the week past, not less than 225 pack animals, heavily laden with provisions, have left this city for the mines. If the mines are half as rich as they are said to be, we may safely calcu- late that many of these trains will return as heavily laden with gold dust as they now are with provisions." The same issue says that Mr. Bridges of Oregon City had taken out 57 ounces of gold from his claim on Babboon Gulch, the first day he had worked it, 157 ounces the second day, 214 ounces the third, and 200 ounces in two hour's time on
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the fourth. Single pans were yielding from 25 cents to $2.50, and in some places ounces would not describe the results obtained.
The ranchers and stock-growers in the Walla Walla! country would have secured a liberal share of this wealth, but for the severity of the winter, which turned their bright prospects of profit into an actual and almost ruinous loss. Most of their cattle perished. Many lost their horses also. Hay went up to $125 per ton, and flour to $25 per barrel. The loss of animals alone was estimated at $1,000,000, and many of the farmers were compelled to buy seed for the next year's planting, at ruinously high prices.
But in spite of the severe weather, the gold seekers began to assemble early at Portland, in 1862, and other points as near the mines as the frozen river would permit them to get. By March 22d, the "Statesman" had learned, by those who had arrived from the Dalles, that 4,000 miners had been assembled fifteen days earlier in Portland, where they were waiting for navigation to open. Hundreds were arriving there by every steamer. During April, most of these people were on their way up the river, and by the last of May, it was estimated that from 20,000 to 25,000 gold- seekers had passed up on their way to the mines.
During 1862, eighty new buildings were erected in Walla Walla, including a planing mill and a sash and door factory. Though the farmers produced but little to sell that year, on account of the difficulty of getting seed, enough was grown to warrant the building of a new flour mill on Yellow Hawk Creek. The number of settlers steadily increased, in spite of the tempting news from the mines, where new and rich discoveries were frequently reported, some of the richest being in the Boise Valley. Captain Medorem Crawford
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estimated that 1,600 wagons and fully 10,000 people crossed the plains that year, and, although the Grande Ronde Valley tempted many of these, Walla Walla got a goodly share of them. In March 1862, Lewiston, at the confluence of the Clearwater and Snake rivers, was platted, and in April Wallula, on the Columbia, was started.
The discovery of gold in the Boise region turned the tide of gold seekers southward, from the mouth of the Umatilla, and this drew away a good deal of the trade that had been going to Walla Walla. A line of stages was established, to run over the emigrant trail from that point to the new mines, thus offering an advantage which Walla Walla did not possess. Many of the immigrants who had started for Oregon and Washington, from the older States, now turned aside to the mines, or found homes in the valleys of what is now Idaho, and the settlement of eastern Washington was considerably retarded from this cause. But notwithstanding all this, some progress was made. The merchants of Walla Walla met the competition of the new town, with its stage line, as best they could. They established, or procured the estab- lishment, of a stage line from Wallula to their town, by which the fare was $5 for each passenger, and freight transportation was $20 per ton. A triweekly mail from the Dalles was also established.
In the spring of 1864, George F. Thomas & Co. started a stage-line from Walla Walla to Boise; Wells, Fargo & Co. had established its express business over the same route during the preceding year, and these diverted a part of the business with the Boise district from Umatilla to Walla Walla. New gold discoveries on the Kootenai, made during this year, brought a fresh influx of miners through the valley, and so restored to Walla Walla all its earlier prosperity, for
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the time being. The first overland mail direct from the Missouri River, by way of Boise and Salt Lake, by Ben Holliday's stage-line, was received and sent out during this season, and passengers were carried between Atchison, Kan., and Portland, for $260 each, with 25 pounds of baggage free. Their meals en route cost about $40 in addition. The enroll- ment of all citizens subject to military duty, made that year, showed 1,133 persons, of the required age and physical qualifications, in Walla Walla County, although the anti-war party, which was particularly strong, claimed that at least 300 of these were mere transients. The assessment rolls showed the total property valuation in the county, which then com- prised all of Columbia, Garfield and Asotin, as well as what is now Walla Walla County, to be $1,545,056, an increase of $432,145 over the valuation for the preceding year.
It was in this year that a discovery was made in this country of far greater value to it, and to all of eastern Wash- ington, than all the gold mines that had been or were to be found, and this was that wheat could be grown on the hills as well as in the valleys. A farmer wishing to build his house on a hill, overlooking his farm in the river bottom country, dug a well, and observed in doing so that the ground pene- trated was practically the same from the surface to a depth of fifty feet, and that so far as appearance went, it was the same as that in the valley lands. He planted some wheat there, and the result was so satisfactory that settlers soon began to choose their claims among the hills, as readily as in the valleys. Ten years later Dr. N. G. Blalock had 1,000 acres, in one body, surveyed out of his wheat fields on these hills, the yield from which, when threshed and ready for market, was found to average above fifty bushels per acre.
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The Montana gold mines began to attract attention in 1865, and the Walla Walla country saw another rush of miners, similar to those of preceding years. "From every point of the compass," says the "Statesman" in its issue of March 13th, "they drift by hundreds and thousands, and the cry is, 'still they come.' The excitement promises to depopulate California, and from our own territory, as well as Oregon, the rush is unprecedented. The stages that leave here go out loaded down with passengers, all bound for Blackfoot."
Chicago, as well as San Francisco, now began to take an interest in the mining regions of the Northwest, and to bid sharply for their trade. San Francisco merchants figured that it cost them from $270 to $345 per ton to ship their goods by any of four known routes to Helena, and they were much concerned for fear that Chicago could send theirs at less cost. It was also estimated that 100 pack trains of not less than 50 animals, carrying 300 pounds each, were engaged in the carrying trade between the head of navigation, on the Columbia River, and Montana. The total value of goods carried by these pack trains, for the year, was placed at $1,200,000. These goods were packed a total distance of 450 miles from Walla Walla, at a cost varying from 13 to 18 cents per pound.
So far everything had been shipped into the eastern Wash- ington country, and nothing shipped out, except to the mines. But in 1866, the mills in and near Walla Walla, and at Waits- burg-which had been started during the preceding year --- found they were producing more flour than the miners re- quired, and the first shipment was made down the river. The Oregon Steam Navigation Company, which now con- trolled the transportation business by river, advanced the
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rate from $7.50 to $17.50 per barrel, after the first experi- mental shipment was made, but soon reduced it again, and, in 1867, no less than 4,735 barrels were shipped in this direction, in consequence. Soon aferwards, an experiment in shipping wheat was made, with results so satisfactory that 15,000 bushels went down the river that year. There was a short crop in 1869 and all the grain and flour produced by the farmers and the mills sold readily at home.
The lumber business also got started during these exciting years. In a country where Mckinlay and Peter Skeen Ogden had been compelled to collect driftwood forty-four years earlier, with which to build Fort Walla Walla, lumber was certain to be early in demand and, if it could be produced, would sell readily at good figures. Robie & Co. built the first sawmill in eastern Washington, near Walla Walla, in 1859, and Noble & Co. built one across the Oregon line the same year. Samuel Linkton appears to have got a small mill started in the foothills of the Blue Mountains, near the crossing of the emigrant road, as early as 1862-possibly earlier. It was a small affair and the timber in its neighbor- hood was also small in comparison with that west of the mountains. It was soon so nearly all cut away, that in the summer of 1864, the mill was removed to Mill Creek, about twenty miles above Walla Walla, where, a year or two later, Linkton sold it to one of his employees, George H. Reed, afterwards well known in Tacoma, and two other men named Stevens and Snider. They ran it until there were no more logs that could be floated to it, when it was again moved, this time into the Blue Mountains, south of the Oregon line. Migratory sawmills like this one, in that day, left their monuments in the nomenclature of the country. The site on which this mill was first located is still known as
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Linkton's Mountain, and one of its later sites as Reed and Harney Mountain.
Like many other towns and cities to which rich mining districts have been tributary, Walla Walla had its bitter experience with the lawless element. Following the troops of miners which poured through it in the early sixties, came the gamblers, thieves and outlaws of every sort, and many of these thought new and thriving towns near enough to the mines to serve their purposes admirably. The machinery for making and executing wholesome laws, and police regu- lations, had not yet been established. Honest men were too busy, or thought they were, to give attention to their organi- zation, and so these disreputable characters took the business in hand, and they took good care that no peace-officers were elected or appointed who would make them any trouble. By the summer of 1862, the ranchers were beginning to be annoyed by horse-thieves and cattle-thieves, and were com- pelled to watch their animals both day and night, whether they were on the range or housed in their barns and stables, to avoid loss. At length even this did not furnish full pro- tection, and a vigilance committee and Judge Lynch began to be talked of. But the cut-throats only laughed at this and grew bolder.
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