USA > Washington > History of Washington; the rise and progress of an American state, Vol. IV > Part 7
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Finally the inevitable followed. The property-owners began to act singly, when occasion demanded, and then in unison. In April, a man was shot in open day not far from Rev. Cushing Eells' house. He was suspected to be a horse-thief, and when his body was found it was assumed that he had been shot when stealing, or attempting to steal. Everybody knew him, and nobody complained seriously about the manner of his taking off, although he left a wife and family for whom all had compassion. But the widow
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had two brothers, who were staunch supporters of the law, and she was well cared for. One day a considerable band of cattle were stolen. Soon the owners and their neighbors were riding in hot haste after the thieves. They were pur- sued for some miles, and at times a battle seemed imminent. Toward evening some shooting was heard by those who had remained at their homes, and later the owners returned with their cattle. Not much was said about the means by which they were recovered. Those who knew did not care to tell, and those who did not know did not question too closely. Next morning, which was Sunday, when people were going to church, the dead body of a man was found bound to a tree, with a rope tightly knotted about his neck, while on the ground nearby was found his saddle and his pistol. It was clear that one cattle-thief had been strangled to death; the particulars of the tragedy were not necessary.
"Six-Toed Pete," a notorious ruffian, was arrested, but broke jail, and was found hiding in the schoolhouse. He was recaptured and taken away. He returned to trouble the community no more. One day a man rode a particularly fine horse through the town at a gallop, and was followed by two younger men. It was evident to everybody that the first rider was a horse-thief, and that the horse he was pressing so mercilessly had been stolen. Next day both horse and rider were found dead, a few miles beyond town. It had been necessary to bring down the horse in order to get the rider, but the sacrifice had been made.
Things went on in this way for a year or more. The lawless element was bold and defiant; the law-abiding part of the community were calm but determined. Every now and again some outlaw's body would be found suspended from a tree, or shot through with bullets, by the roadside,
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or in some convenient stream or thicket. Some fifteen or sixteen of them ceased to be troublesome in this way. One of the worst of the banditti, a French half-breed woman, disappeared and was never again heard from. Then there was an exodus of this criminal class, who temporarily trans- ferred the scene of their activities to Boise. They remained there while that camp was at the height of its prosperity, but in time they began to return to Walla Walla. One of the advance guard was a noted ruffian named Patterson. He always went armed in a conspicuous way, and was known as a dead shot. During the winter of 1864-65, he was the terror of the town, and none cared to dispute the way with him. Things soon became as bad as they had ever been. Respectable people did not appear on the streets after dark, if they could help it, nor did they open the doors of their homes or places of business in the evening without arms in their hands. It was clear that the rough element had returned, and would remain until driven out again.
Patterson's turn came early. He had bullied a watchman, one of the most inoffensive men in town, so far as appearances went, but one who was peculiarly unforgiving. He watched for his opportunity and soon found it. The burly ruffian entered a barbershop one morning, and laid aside the revolver he so conspicuously carried, while being shaved. The watchman went to the back door of the shop, waited until his enemy's face was turned toward the window during the shaving operation, and then shot him through the head. The first shot was not fatal, but enough more were added to complete the work. The watchman gave himself up to the sheriff, who happened to be near, and was taken to jail, which was the safest place in town for him until the excite- ment among the rough element should blow over, but a
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few nights afterward some friend aided him to escape and he never returned.
Much excitement followed this shooting. The rough ele- ment now declared that the law should be enforced, and as usual threatened to enforce it themselves. But they were soon compelled to change their arrogant tone for one of supplication. Swift riders were sent through the country in all directions to summon those who could be relied upon, and they answered promptly. It was noticed a few mornings later that there were an unusual number of people in town. The streets were full of farmers' wagons. The owners of these wagons seemed to be going about their business as usual, and showed no signs of an intention to do anything else. But it was noted that few of them had their wives with them. It soon began to be rumored that there was a loaded rifle under the straw in the bottom of every wagon, which was true, and in some there were more than one. The rough element quickly took the alarm. "Give us a few hours," they said, "and we will trouble you no more." The terms offered were accepted. There was a general packing up of gambling implements and other property belonging to the undesirable element, and within the succeed- ing twenty-four hours most of them departed and never returned. Walla Walla took its place among the peaceable and law-abiding towns of the territory and so remained .*
The successive discoveries of gold in the region east of Walla Walla had drawn into that part of the territory a popu- lation sufficiently large to justify the organization of a separate government by 1862, and an act creating the territory of
* For most of the details in this account of the purification of Walla Walla, the mining town, I am indebted to an interesting paper by Mr. Edwin Eells, and to the life of "Father Eells," by Rev. Myron Eells.
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Idaho passed both houses of Congress, and was approved by the president March 2, 1863. The territory included in it was all that part of old Oregon lying east of the one hundred and seventieth degree of west longitude. All that portion of this vast region which lay south of the forty-sixth parallel, the northern boundary of Oregon, had become a part of Washington when Oregon was admitted as a State in 1859. The counties of Missoula, Shoshone, Idaho, Nez Perce and Boise had been organized in it by the territorial legislature of Washington, but had apparently never been represented in that body, if indeed the local governments provided for it had ever been organized.
William H. Wallace, of Steilacoom, who had succeeded Governor Stevens as delegate in Congress in 1861, was made the first governor of the new territory. It is believed that Mrs. Wallace had first suggested its name, which is an Indian word meaning Gem of the Mountains. Mr. Wallace's term was just expiring and he went almost immediately to his new post of duty and the territorial government was soon organized, making the separation from Washington com- plete.
Walla Walla County, which, as originally organized in 1854, included all of Washington east of the Cascades, and all of Idaho and that part of Montana lying west of the Rocky Mountains and north of the forty-sixth parallel, thus lost a large and fruitful part of its area. But it had been previously reduced in 1858 by the organization of Spokane County, which nominally took from it everything north and east of the Columbia and Snake rivers. But no government was ever organized for the county thus described. Enough settlers, however, had gone into the region lying between the Columbia and the divide between its valley and that of the
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Yakima, to justify the organization of a new county, and, in December, 1859, the legislature created Klikitat County- spelled Clicatat in the act-with practically the same boun- daries that the county had before Benton County was created. In January, 1860, an act recreating Spokane County was passed, but again no county government was organ- ized.
During the summer of 1859, the soldiers of Captain J. J. Archer's company, 9th infantry, who were on guard at the camp of the boundary commissioners at Lake Osogoos, found gold in the Similkameen River, and soon it was reported that they were taking out $20 per day per man, with pans, after walking five miles each way to and from the mines. This news had led to a considerable rush toward the boundary. The little steamer George Wright, which had just been built to run from the Dalles to points on the upper Columbia and Snake River, was soon doing a thriving business. On her first trip in the spring of 1860, she took twenty pros- pectors and their outfits as far as Priest Rapids, and on her second she took fifty. Prospectors who had been disap- pointed in the Fraser River country now turned toward the Similkameen. Several parties left the Willamette in small boats, intending to make the entire journey in them, as the Hudson's Bay Company people had done thirty-five years earlier, and parties from the Puget Sound country started, as early as March, to cross the range, although it was known that the snow would probably obstruct their passage until May, and possibly till June.
But the gold-bearing bars of the Similkameen were soon found to be in British territory, and a tax of $100 per man was demanded by the alert agents of Governor Douglass, before any American was permitted to begin work there.
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This proved very discouraging, and, although the first bars yielded richly in coarse gold, they were soon exhausted. Two reasons, therefore, impelled the gold hunters to make search elsewhere. Some of them made fresh discoveries in the neighborhood of Fort Colvile, now a United States military post, where Major Lugenbeel was in command, and some pressed on into the Kootenai country, while still others returned to the Dalles, and Walla Walla. Few, if any, remained in the country as settlers. Spokane County, as recreated, got no real benefit from this rush of gold hunters, and, in January, 1864, it was annexed to Stevens County, which had been created by act of January 20, 1863.
It need hardly be mentioned that this latter county was named in honor of the first governor of the territory, whose death, on the battlefield at Chantilly, had occurred only a few months earlier. The limits of this county, as defined in this act, included all the territory lying west of the Colum- bia and north of the Wenatchee. The territory south of the Wenatchee, and now included in the counties of Kittitas and Yakima and part of Benton County, had been assigned to a new county, to be named Ferguson, by act of January 23, 1863, but it was never organized. When Spokane and Stevens counties were consolidated in 1864, the new county of Stevens included all of eastern Washington lying north of the Wenatchee and Snake rivers. It was not until October 30, 1879, that an act was passed finally separating Spokane from Stevens, and the county was established.
All the territory lying south of a line running due west from a point two miles above the lower steamboat landing at Priest Rapids, that had once been assigned to Ferguson County, was erected into a new county called Yakima, by act of January 18, 1865. For the rest, it will be sufficient
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to say that Whitman County, including a large part of Frank- lin, was organized in 1871; Columbia in 1875; Lincoln- which it was at first proposed to call Sprague, in honor of General John W. Sprague, for many years manager of the Northern Pacific Railroad, in Washington and Oregon- Kittitas, Franklin, Adams and Douglas were created in 1883; Okanogan in 1888; Ferry in 1899, and Chelan in the same year.
Settlement in some of these counties had begun early, but had advanced very slowly. For a long time their possi- bilities were not understood, or even suspected. Their barren appearance, particularly in the central part of the territory, where sagebrush, cactus and greasewood seemed to the casual observer to be the only natural products, gave them a forbidding look to the settlers coming from the smiling prairies, or fertile openings of the old Northwest. Even the "bunchgrass country" of the eastern counties, where the immense herds of sleek horses owned by the Indians showed how well fed they were, tempted only the cattle, horse and sheep growers for many years. Henry Wind and A. B. Berneke, who were probably the first settlers in what is now Adams County, thought the country good only for stock-raising. They went there in 1864, and during the four succeeding years built a stone house near Cow Creek, using mortar made of mud and sand, and it is still standing. In 1868 they sold out their "squatter rights," for they had little else save their house and some stock to sell, and one of their successors, George Lucas, known as "Uncle George," and his brother lived on the place for thirty years without suspecting that it was worth their while to secure title to it from the government. Even A. L. Coffee, a man of some scientific acquirements, who was one of the early surveyors
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in this county, saw no value in its soil until many years after- wards. He told W. R. Cunningham Sr., in 1894, that he had recently been reading of the productiveness of the soil in the neighborhood of Mount Vesuvius, which under proper tillage improves rather than deteriorates year by year, and was convinced that the soil of Adams and other counties of central Washington was of the same character. J. F. Cross and his wife were the sixth and seventh white persons to make their home in this country, and they arrived in 1872. It was not until 1879 that the first hundred acres in the county were plowed and sown to wheat, by James G. Bennett, who also dug the first farm well in the county. Wheat is now the principal product of the county, which has produced between seven and eight million bushels in a single year.
The first real settlement in Whitman County was made in 1868, by people from the Walla Walla Valley. In the year following a number of newcomers made locations on Union Flat, and in 1870, James A. Perkins and T. J. Smith located their claims where the thriving city of Colfax now stands. As in all the other counties, the first arrivals were stock-raisers.
Writing of the year 1888, Judge Chadwick, now of the State supreme court, says: "The Cayuse was our standby in those days. In that year I saw a band of three thousand of these beautiful creatures on the banks of the river at Penewawa-Old Hus Hus Poween's band, the last hereditary chief of the Peloose tribe of Indians. For $3, I might have picked the band." This old chief was the last regular successor of that Palouse chief, whose 800 horses Colonel Wright's soldiers had shot in 1858, after the battle of Spokane Plains.
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As in Walla Walla County, the first active development, in an agricultural way, began in Whitman County when the discovery was made that cereals would grow on the hills as well as in the valleys. At about the same time it was demonstrated, by actual experiment, that apples, peaches, plums and cherries would grow on the hills, and fruit- raising, as in Walla Walla, Spokane and other neighboring counties, has since become a leading industry, particularly along the Snake River.
Samuel Wilbur Condit, known in early days as "Wild- Goose Bill," and Captain John McGourin were the first white settlers in Lincoln County. Condit located his claim, in 1875, where the town of Wilbur now stands, and it was apparently named in his honor. O. B. Parks, J. G. Kathroe and Barney Fitzpatrick arrived in the neighborhood of Davenport, and A. D. Strout, C. C. May, L. A. Kennedy, T. M. Cooper, James Hulbert, John Oakly and Major J. K. Worts came a year later.
Douglass County was settled still later. As in Adams, Lincoln and Whitman Counties its earliest settlers were stockmen. Among the first of these to arrive were Daniel Paul and Philip McEntee, who located near the present site of Coulee City, in 1882, while A. T. Greene, Judge Snow, Isaac Newhouse and E. F. Stowell arrived in the vicinity of "Jumper's Flats," now Waterville, between that time and 1887. This was for several years supposed to be the only part of this large central country, having any agricul- tural possibilities, except such as were found in the bottoms of the Moses and Grand coulees, the two vast rents in the earth which traverse the country from west to east through its middle part. It soon came to be known as the Big Bend country, being located in the great bend of the Columbia,
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Built at New London, Conn. for the Great Northern Railroad in 1904. Length 630 feet, breadth 73 feet 6 inches, depth 54 feet; gross tonnage, as per Lloyd's rules, 20,718 tons; net 13,325 tons; measurement capacity 28,317 tons; sea speed 15 knots; twin screws; [1,500 horse power. As compared with Gray's ship, the Columbia 210 tons, or Vancouver's, the Discovery, 400 tons, she would seem like a floating island.
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and has since become famous for its wheat and fruit, and particularly its red apples.
The first white settler to make a home in what is now Yakima County was Fielding Mortimer Thorp, who arrived in the Moxee Valley with his family, consisting of four sons and five daughters, early in February, 1861. Thorp had crossed the plains to Oregon in 1844, the same year the Simmons party came. He first made a home in the Willam- ette Valley, but, in October, 1860, he drove a band of cattle to the Yakima to winter on the abundant forage of that region. During the severe winter of 1861-62, the settlers both in Oregon and Washington lost most of their stock. Eighteen inches of snow fell in the Yakima Valley. Rain followed, and then several days of severe cold weather ensued, forming a sheet of ice and snow over the whole valley, through which neither cattle, sheep nor horses could force their way to the grass that lay buried beneath it. But Thorp and his four sons, together with Charles A. Splawn, who by this time had married his eldest daughter, set reso- lutely to work with heavy wooden flails and shovels to break down this icy barrier, and clear away the snow from ground enough to allow their stock to get food. In this way most of their animals were saved.
For several years this family lived almost alone in the valley. In 1862, the Indians became very threatening. The agent stationed at Fort Simcoe thought it prudent to retire to the Dalles, but Thorp remained on his ranch. On one or two occasions, they appeared at his place in con- siderable numbers, but he and his family met them so boldly that they did not venture an attack.
But it was not until a considerable time later that other settlers began to seek homes in that region. When Ferguson
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County was formed by the legislature in January, 1863, with practically the same limits as the Yakima County of 1865, James A. Wilson, Alfred Hall and a man named - Place were made the first board of commissioners, with Willis ! Thorp as sheriff, and W. Shaugh, justice of the peace. But the government of the county under this name was never organized, and in 1865 the name was changed to Yakima. William Parker, J. H. Wilbur and Charles Splawn were named as commissioners, William Wright, auditor, Willis Thorp, treasurer, and Gilbert Pell, sheriff.
A town called Yakima City gradually grew up near Union Gap, on the other side of which Rains had camped in 1855, and permitted the Indians to jeer at him until his soldiers could stand it no longer, and so attacked and drove them over the hills without his order or authority. This town claimed to be "the Giant of the West," for a time, and its inhabitants hoped it would sometime be the metropolis of the interior. It had a Catholic, a Christian and a Con- gregationalist church, a Methodist society which held ser- vices more or less regularly, several shops and mercantile establishments, and presented a thriving appearance to the immigrants as they passed through it on their way to the Sound. But few of them were tempted to stop in the vicinity, and the settlement of the valley proceeded but slowly for twenty years.
When the Northern Pacific Railroad reached the valley in 1885, most of the settlers in the county were living at or near Yakima City, or scattered along the river from the Columbia to the Wenass. The railroad refused to establish a station at the town, claiming that it was unfavorably located and would become a swamp when the valley came to be irrigated, as it must be. It located a new town four
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miles further west, which it called North Yakima, and the inhabitants of the earlier town gradually removed to it, leaving "the Giant of the West" practically deserted.
Although the Spokane country had been explored by members of the Astor party, and was almost as well known to the early fur hunters as any part of Oregon, actual settle- ment in it did not begin until a much later date. David Thompson, first of all the Northwesters to arrive in Oregon, had camped for a time near the falls before he went to Astoria, and years later Peter Skeen Ogden, Archibald McKinlay and John Work had traveled up and down through it to the country of the Kalispels, the Flatheads and the Cœur d'Alenes. Cushing Eells and Elkanah Walker from Tshimakain had preached to the Indians there many times, and had hoped much from their ministrations. But from the time they were forced to leave the country, after the Whitman massacre, no white man seems to have thought of making a home there until James Monaghan chose a claim on the river, about twenty miles below the falls, in 1860. Here he planted an orchard, for a time kept a ferry, and later built a bridge. Guy Haines, who had been a quartermaster with the McClellan party in 1853, settled at Walker's Prairie, near the site of the old mission, in 1862, and William Newman, who had served with the escort for the boundary commissioners in 1860, and perhaps earlier, began to make himself a home near Newman Lake in 1865. Stephen Liberty, who came from Canada in 1866, took a claim near Liberty Lake in 1869, and Joseph Moran settled near the present city of Spokane in the same year. Two Frenchmen named La Fevre and Labie were then living near Medical Lake, and Major Whimpey, then or soon after, had a ranch near Latah.
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These seem to have been the only white settlers in the county previous to 1870, though when Spokane County was first organized by act of the legislature in 1858, Robert Douglass, John Owen and William McCreary were named as commissioners, Patrick McKenzie, sheriff, Lafayette Alexander, auditor, and the county seat was fixed on the land claim of Angus McLeod. But at that time the county included the whole country north of the Snake and east of the Columbia rivers, to the top of the Rocky Mountains.
J. J. Downing and L. R. Scranton were the first American settlers on the site of the present city of Spokane. They arrived in 1872. There were not at that time more than a dozen white settlers in the county. M. M. Cowley arrived that year, and started a store about seventeen miles east of the falls. Downing and Scranton built a mill on the south side of the river, but sold it in 1873 to James N. Glover, who had lived for a time at Salem, Ore., but on account of failing health had gone to eastern Washington, intending to start a sheep-ranch. He had gone up the river by boat to Lewiston, then the head of navigation, and then, in com- pany with J. N. Matheney, rode across to the Spokane on horseback, looking carefully for grazing lands as they went. But the outlook for milling, and possibly for city-building, at the falls seemed so favorable to Glover, that he was easily persuaded to try a new venture. Downing and Scranton had by this time been joined by a man named Benjamin, to whom they had sold an interest in their enter- prise, but he had made only a small payment in cash, and there was so little prospect that he would be able to complete the transaction that his partners were much dissatisfied. Glover accordingly purchased his interest, and leaving Matheney in charge, returned to Portland for machinery
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