History of the Yakima Valley, Washington; comprising Yakima, Kittitas, and Benton Counties, Vol. I, Part 32

Author: Lyman, William Denison, 1852-1920
Publication date: 1919
Publisher: [Chicago] S.J. Clarke
Number of Pages: 1134

USA > Washington > Benton County > History of the Yakima Valley, Washington; comprising Yakima, Kittitas, and Benton Counties, Vol. I > Part 32
USA > Washington > Kittitas County > History of the Yakima Valley, Washington; comprising Yakima, Kittitas, and Benton Counties, Vol. I > Part 32
USA > Washington > Yakima County > History of the Yakima Valley, Washington; comprising Yakima, Kittitas, and Benton Counties, Vol. I > Part 32

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

Article 10. And provided, That there is also reserved and set apart from the lands ceded by this treaty, for the use and benefit of the aforesaid confed- erated tribes and bands, a tract of land not exceeding in quantity one township of six miles square, situated at the forks of the Pisquouse or Wenatshapam River, and known as the "Wenatshapam Fishery," which said reservation shall be surveyed and marked out whenever the President may direct, and be subject to the same provisions and restrictions as other Indian reservations.

Article 11. This treaty shall be obligatory upon the contracting parties as soon as the same shall be ratified by the President and Senate of the United States.

In testimony whereof, the said Isaac I. Stevens, governor and superin- tendent of Indian affairs for the Territory of Washington, and the under- signed head chief, chiefs, headmen, and delegates of the aforesaid confederated tribes and bands of Indians, have hereunto set their hands and seals, at the place and on the day and year hereinbefore written.

ISAAC I. STEVENS, Governor and Superintendent. (L. S.)

KAMAIAKUN, his x mark (L. S.) WISH-OCH-KMPITS, his x mark (L. S.)

SKLOOM, his x mark

(L. S.)

Koo-LAT-TOOSE, his x mark (L. S.)

OWHI, his x mark (L. S.) SHEE-AH-COTTE, liis x mark (L. S.)

TE-COLE-KUN, his x mark (L. S.) TUCK-QUILLE, his x mark (L. S.) LA-HOOM, his x mark (L. S.) KA-LOO-AS, his x mark (L. S.)

WILLIAM CHARLEY, INTERPRETER From Me Whorter's "The Crime Against the Yakimas"

WIFE OF WILLIAM CHARLEY

265

HISTORY OF YAKIMA VALLEY

ME-NI-NOCK, his x mark (L. S.) SCHA-NOO-A, his x mark (L. S.)

ELIT PALMER, his x mark (L. S.) SLA-KISH, his x mark (L. S.)

Signed and sealed in the presence of- James Doty, secretary of treaties, Mie. Cles. Pandosy, O. M. T., Wm. C. Mckay, W. H. Tappan, sub Indian agent, W. T. C. Chirouse, O. M. T.

Patrick McKenzie, interpreter. A. D. Pambrun, interpreter, Joel Palmer, superintendent, Indian affairs, O. T. W. D. Biglow.

PART II ERA OF EARLY GROWTH AND THE MOTHER COUNTY

CHAPTER I

FIRST SETTLEMENTS-FIRST REAL SETTLER-DEALING WITH THIEVING INDIANS GROWING SETTLEMENT-MINING IN YAKIMA VALLEY-SOME CHARACTERISTIC STORIES OF OLD TIMES.

FIRST SETTLEMENTS

We have seen in the preceding chapter that after a dozen years of broken and desultory warfare, together with a plentiful lack of definiteness and con- tinuity of aim, by reason of lack of harmony between the national and state troops,-the Indians were reduced to helplessness, the chief organizers, as Leschi, Qualchan, Peupeumoxmox, Owhi, and Kamiakin, were killed or ban- ished, and the tomahawk and rifle, and firebrand and scalping knife gave way to the beginnings of civilized occupation. It was a great era in this country when the long-closed gates of the Inland Empire were thrown open and immi- gration poured in. The bulk of first comers came from the Willamette Valley. The larger tide turned to the Walla Walla country. This was very natural. The "Valley of Waters" had been seen by many immigrants of the forties and fifties. They had been favorably impressed with its beauty and evident fer- tility. Some indeed had located there prior to the Indian wars. The discovery of the Idaho goldfields in 1860-61 had caused a stampede of which the natural outfitting point was Walla Walla. As a result of these conditions and of the added fact that the chief military post- was located at that point, Walla Walla became the principal early settlement and the mother county of the Inland Em- pire. In fact the first Walla Walla County included all of eastern Washington, over half of Idaho, and about a fourth of Montana. No organization, how- ever, was effected, and a new alignment a little later gave the mother county somewhat less colossal dimensions.

The Yakima Valley was relatively late in entering the field. The reasons are obvious. It was off the main course of immigrant travel and hence was less known. Although the famous Naches Road was laid out in 1853 and a notable immigration to Puget Sound occurred in that year, and there was later a considerable movement by that route, yet the great tide of travel was by the Oregon Trail to the Willamette Valley. Moreover the evident aridity of climate, the vast sagebrush deserts of the lower valley with poor grazing sup- plies, even though along the water courses and in the upper valleys the Indian herds congregated in great numbers, discouraged settlement. Hence there was

266

267

HISTORY OF YAKIMA VALLEY

hardly a real immigration till the decade of the seventies, and not till the eigh- ties, with the beginnings of regular irrigation and coming of railroads was there a development comparable with that which had taken place in Walla Walla twenty years earlier. The decade of the eighties, including one or two years of the seventies, was the great foundation period of most of eastern Washing- ton. The Palouse country, the Spokane and Big Bend, the Asotin and Pataha regions, the Wenatchee and Yakima,-all may be said to have had their real birth in the early eighties, while Walla Walla was already a blooming maiden of twenty summers. There was, however, a kind of prenatal existence for the other regions which makes a most significant and entertaining story, and to that period of history in Yakima we now address ourselves. We draw our data considerably from the book by A. J. Splawn, already referred to so many times. "The History of Klickitat, Yakima, and Kittitas Counties," published in 1904, by the Interstate Publishing Company, is also a valuable source of information. Miscellaneous writings, culled from magazines and newspapers, and regular newspaper files, have been used so far as possible. Still more important and vital is the testimony of living participants in the history. The historian is very fortunate to find in Yakima, still in the best of health and spirits, a member of the first pioneer family of the Yakima Valley. This is Leonard Thorp, known and honored by his fellow townsmen, a man who has seen the sagebrush plains transformed into one of the garden spots of the earth. Mrs. Thorp (Philena Henson) also belonged to a pioneer family, coming but a little later.

A good many of the first comers to Yakima were "Squaw men." Some of them were transient wanderers, while others became permanent and influential in laying first foundations. It is difficult to say with certainty how early these men began coming. As we have seen in an earlier chapter, David Longmire looked upon the Yakima Valley first of any one now living in Yakima. That was in 1853, the year of the first wagon train to Puget Sound. Mr. Longmire says that there were no white men here at that time except two Catholic priests, one at Tampico and the other near Selah at the subsequent homestead of George Taylor, still later acquired by George Hall. It is quite probable that other Whites had made sporadic locations at various places in the vast expanse of the valley with its many arms. The first names, however, that appear are those of certain cattlemen, who became well-known in later history. They came in 1859, but made no permanent location. These men were Ben Snipes, William Murphy, Fred Allen, Jacob Allen, Bert Allen, and John B. Nelson. A little later came James Murphy, John Murphy, William Henderson, William Connell, and John Jeffrey. These latter men were located in the Klickitat, but drove their cattle across the Simcoe Mountains to the Yakima. None of these cattlemen made any definite location till several years later.

FIRST REAL SETTLER

The first real settler was F. Mortimer Thorp. His coming was a notable event worthy of all commemoration. Moreover, his descendants, now in the fourth generation, have continued to play a noble part in the development of

268

HISTORY OF YAKIMA VALLEY

Yakima, and hence we may well take the coming of Mortimer Thorp and fam- ily as the initial date of beginnings. Mr. Thorp was one of the genuine type of American frontiersmen, a type passing away rapidly, but one which has left its impress on American and even world history beyond any other type. While conditions no longer make possible the existence of that type in the outer semblance of the old pioneer days, yet it is due to their transmitted qualities of mind and body that their sons have been going by the million to France to play a decisive part in executing sentence of death on that hoary-headed iniquity of monarchical militarism which was threatening to enslave Europe and ultimately to destroy that greatest product of the ages, which we are proud to call Ameri- canism, which Lincoln himself, one of the best examples of the Ameri- can pioneer, called "the last best hope of earth." Daring, generous, hospitable, ambitious, liberty-loving, regardless of the old and looking toward the new, freehanded, oftentimes high-tempered and quick with a "gun" or a fist, but not mean or sneaking or hypocritical, intolerant toward Indians, yet quickly sympathetic under all his sternness, in deadly earnest about the essentials of life but with great facility in adaptation of means to ends, thinking for him- self and perfectly indifferent to any supposed "authority" of church or state or society, inclined to melancholy, and yet with a dry nonchalant humor, with enough wholesome human nature and original sin to give a rich flavor to his other qualities-the western pioneer is one of the choicest products of human evolution. He is the true maker of the modern world. And "by this sign we shall conquer" in the present great crisis of the world's history, and make the world "safe for Democracy."

Mr. Thorp was born in Kentucky and his wife, Margaret Bounds, was born in Tennessee. In 1844 they came to Oregon and settled in Polk County. But as settlements thickened, the restless pioneer craving to move on and lay new foundations possessed them, and in 1858 the family, then including nine chil- dren (after the good old Oregon fashion of big families, while in these degen- erate days it is hard to contribute even one or two to the race stock of the world), left the Oregon home and located in the Klickitat Valley at the subsequent site of Goldendale. But apparently fearing that somebody else might come to the same spot, Mr. Thorp, having played an influential part in founding the county of Klickitat, being first probate judge, again pulled up stakes and moved on. In the latter part of 1860 he drove a herd of cattle into the Moxee. The herd consisted of fine Durham cattle, over two hundred and fifty in number. He had also a number of horses. He employed Benjamin Snelling, John Zumwalt, and A. C. Myers, as herders, and built for them a little log cabin, the first house built in Yakima Valley, except those of the military forces and the Cath- olic fathers. In February, 1861, Mr. Thorp moved with his family from Klickitat to the new home on the Moxee. The location is known of course, to all old-timers, in the southern part of the Moxee Valley, by the "big spring," near the bluff, across the Yakima River from the mouth of the Ahtanum. To that sightly spot the first family of Yakima made their way, father, mother, and nine children, four boys and five girls, on horseback, and with their house- hold goods on pack-horses. Living first in the log cabin built for the cattle

269

HISTORY OF YAKIMA VALLEY

herders, they soon constructed a better cabin, twenty-five by sixteen feet in size, and were ready to live in the generous frontier style. No one thought then of the Yakima Valley being anything more than a stock country on any large scale, but the Thorps cleared off and planted a tract of several acres on the bottom land and were rewarded with an abundance of garden products in the Fall. In the Fall also Mr. Thorp succeeded in making his way from Klick- itat with a wagon. He brought in a cook stove, some furniture and other fun- damental conveniences, thus lightening the household duties of his wife and daughters to a great degree.

DEALING WITH THIEVING INDIANS

Although the Indian wars were over the Yakima Valley was then a genu- ine Indian country and at times that first family on the Moxee were in no little peril. Mr. Thorp was one of the boldest of men and he met all dangers with such unflinching courage as to quench them at the very outset. This is well illustrated by two incidents related to the author by Mr. Leonard Thorp, who at the time of settlement in Moxee was a sixteen-year-old boy, but like other pioneer boys, accustomed to the work and responsibilities of a man. In the Summer of 1862 a fine gray horse, Mr. Thorp's favorite riding animal, disap- peared. Feeling sure that it was stolen by Indians Mr. Thorp demanded its return of the chief, declaring that if it were not brought back he would punish the thief when he found him in a way that would be remembered. The horse was not returned and finding the thief in course of time the frontiersman exe- cuted his threat by tying him to a tree and giving him such a merciless flogging that he never recovered, dying in a few months. As a result the Indians had such wholesome respect for the one man on the Moxee that his stock were seldom molested. Leonard Thorp in narrating this instance of his father's energetic and decisive methods, remarked rather apologetically that his father was pretty high-tempered and very strong, and moreover had always been accustomed to a frontiersman's way of dealing with Indians. The other inci- dent concerned a meeting with Smohalla the "dreamer." One day in 1863, Mr. Thorp and Leonard were riding in the middle of the Moxee when they discov- ered a band of Indians approaching rapidly from the north. As the dust flew away from the galloping band it was evident that they were in full war rig. Going to the house hastily and directing the family to hunt places of hiding as well as possible, Mr. Thorp and Leonard went out boldly to meet the array of warriors. Mr. Thorp was well armed, and when the Indians drew near and saw who it was they halted. After his usual manner Thorp took the initiative and with cocked revolver in one hand he seized Smohalla's bridle reins with the other and demanded his reasons for coming down on them in war paint and weapons in that style. Though only two men against eighty Indians, nerve was the winning card as usual. The cocked revolver was a very strong line of argu- ment. Smohalla laughed, offered his hand in a friendly manner and explained that the report had been circulated that a thousand Indians were coming to raid the settlement. He had therefore come with his little band of eighty warriors- all he had-to show the settlers the smallness of his force and to assure them

270

HISTORY OF YAKIMA VALLEY

of his friendship. After a little further exchange of compliments the band of warriors turned and went back as swiftly as they had come. The Thorps always believed that the Indians had come for mischief, but that the unexpected boldness of the settler, with the eloquent look of the revolver, had nipped the plan in the bud.

If we may digress for a paragraph at this point, it may prove of interest to the reader to know that this Smohalla the "dreamer" was chief of a tribe of Indians at Priest Rapids. He had had some most remarkable experiences. He was a great "tomanowas" man and ruled his tribe and even the adjoining tribes through fear of his evil spell. It having been noised around that he was making "bad medicine" in order to kill Moses, the latter met him one day on the bank of the Columbia and beat him almost to death. Smohalla recovered sufficiently to hunt a canoe, in which he went down the river, and with some assistance from sympathetic Whites at Umatilla he continued on to Portland. He finally made an extended tour of Oregon, California, Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, returning home by a northeastern route. He was gone two years and upon his return he regained his former influence, and more, over his people. His great aim was to combat in every possible way the adoption by the Indians of civilized manners, dress, food and religion. He taught the old salmon dances, snake dances, and other old rites and ceremonies, and professed to have special rev- elations from the Great Spirit. A. J. Splawn says that Smohalla was the greatest hypocrite that he ever knew, but that he was also the greatest Indian orator that he ever heard. He especially describes his speech in favor of peace in 1877. Joseph, the Nez Perce Napoleon, had sent emissaries to a council at Wenatchee to urge that Moses and the bands on the Columbia start a foray upon Yakima in order to draw off Howard and his forces from the pursuit of Joseph's band. Smohalla opposed this proposal successfully in what Splawn says was an extraordinary speech.

One custom was almost universal among the pioneers, which has a good deal to commend it, though it has become a back number in our day, and that was early marriages. The corollary of that usage was large families. So, hardly were the Thorps settled in their new home before marriages began to take place. The first was that of Charles A. Splawn and Dalcena Helen Thorp, presumably the first wedding in Yakima. This occurred in the Fall of 1861 at Fort Simcoe, Father Wilbur performing the ceremony.

Next to the Thorps, the Hensons and Splawns may be considered as the first permanent settlers who became identified with the history of Yakima. Alfred Henson with his family had been a neighbor of the Thorps in Klickitat on the present site of Goldendale. In 1861, only two weeks after the departure of the Thorps, Henson and his family under the guidance of a friendly Indian named Howmilt crossed the Simcoe hills, went through the Yakima and onward to the Kittitas and hence to a tributary of the Wenatchee. It is safe to say that this was the first white family to see those two valleys, now so fruitful and well settled, then in all their wild beauty and filled with native tribes. Mr. Hen- son had heard of gold discoveries in the Wenatchee and conjectured that a supply of miners' equipment would be a profitable venture. He had fifteen

271

HISTORY OF YAKIMA VALLEY

horses loaded with such supplies and also drove a few milch cows. John Gubser and George Rearfield went to assist in packing and driving. But dis- appointment awaited him in the Wenatchee. The miners had moved on. See- ing no outlook in that direction Mr. Henson sold his supplies to the Indians and made his way to Moxee where he made a location adjoining his old neigh- bors, the Thorps. In the course of the Fall the Indians became so threatening that Mr. Henson lost faith in the new location and returned with his family to Klickitat. Three years later he moved again and made a permanent location in the Moxee. The Splawns, whose part in Yakima history is equalled by few and surpassed by none, consisted of five brothers, Charles, William, George, Moses, and Andrew J. Their father, John Splawn, was a pioneer of Missouri, dying in 1845 at an early age. Their mother, Nancy McHaney Splawn, with the bravery and enterprise characteristic of those pioneer mothers, went in an im- migrant train to Oregon in 1852. The mother with her five boys settled in Linn County. The book by A. J. Splawn gives so vivid a picture of his heroic mother as to make her a most attractive personality even to those who never knew her. She was one of the genuine frontier women of the Northwest. It is a pleasure to record that she later became established in the Kittitas Valley and lived many years at Ellensburg where she reached a very advanced age, surrounded by the comforts of life after all the strenuous experiences of her earlier years. Charles Splawn, as related, came with the Thorps to Klickitat, having cattle also on the site of Goldendale, and in 1861 he accompanied the Thorps to Moxee and soon after he and the oldest girl were married. A son was born to them in 1863, the first in Yakima, but he died within a year. In 1868 Charles Splawn and his wife moved to the Taneum Creek in the upper Yakima near the present Ellensburg. Mrs. Charles Splawn was the first white woman in what later became Kittitas County. Her daughter Viola, born in 1869, was one of the first white children born in Kittitas. William Splawn, with his wife, Margaret Jacobs, came to Moxee in 1864, and their daughter Nettie, born in that year, subsequently Mrs. Richmond, was the first white girl born in Yakima County. A. J. Splawn went in 1860, a boy of sixteen, to the Klickitat to join his brother Charles. He entered then upon his career as a cattleman, becoming one of the best known in the Northwest. His book, the most notable in Yakima history, contains a multitude of valuable details of the events with which he was so familiar. His subsequent important part in the upbuilding of the county will appear in the further progress of this work. In 1861 he made his first trip into the Yakima Valley. In company with Jack Ker he helped Noble Saxon drive a herd of cattle into Yakima. They drove the herd to the Moxee where they found the Thorps holding solitary possession. On account of an Indian scare the Saxon herd was driven back in the Fall to Klickitat. In May of that same year Major John Thorp, father of Mortimer, drove into Moxee a band of one hundred and fifty steers. For many years fol- lowing "Jack" Splawn ranged back and forth through the Yakima, Wenatchee, Cariboo, Boise, Montana, Kamloops, Okanogan, and all places between, having adventures enough for a volume, many of which he happily preserved in the valuable and entertaining book to which we have so often referred. In 1870 he,

272

HISTORY OF YAKIMA VALLEY

in company with Ben Burch, started a store in Kittitas Valley, with the rather anti-inviting title of "Robbers' Roost." He also filed a squatter's right to one hundred and sixty acres of land. Such a life was, however, ill-suited to the active, adventurous disposition of the cowboy, and in 1872 he sold out to John A. Shoudy, giving him also a present of his squatter's right. That was as good a claim as lay out doors and upon it Mr. Shoudy founded a town. He named it in honor of his wife Ellen, and thus the second largest city in central Wash- ington, Ellensburg, had its beginning. Moses Splawn, another brother, had as many adventures in the mines and elsewhere as fell to the general lot of the family, but was not steadily a resident of the Yakima country. In 1870 he was with A. J. in the store on the site of the coming Ellensburg.

Leonard Thorp has described for us the cattleman's paradise which lay at Moxee when they first settled in 1861. There was rye grass in the bottom as high as a man's shoulders on horseback, so that the stock were fairly swallowed up in it. Though the plains were mainly covered with sagebrush there was mixed with it, and yet more in the hills, the most luxurious bunch grass. This limitless supply of feed, together with the pure cold waters of the Yakima rushing by, made a little world of themselves for the stock. Though the lonely family by the "big spring" in the Moxee had no neighbors nearer than Klicki- tat, about sixty miles distant, and had no money, nor felt the need of any, they had a rude plenty, with their cattle, game, fish, and the products of their garden. In the midst of their satisfaction came that "hard Winter" cf 1861-62, the worst ever known, unless the recent one of 1915-16 be accounted a rival. But in these times the facilities of life are so much more numerous that a comparison is not possible. In some regions the cattle industry was practically wiped out in 1861-62. Heavy snows began in November of that year. One followed an- other to be succeeded at intervals with heavy rain, freezing on top, with an occasional partial thaw, after which would come another freeze. There was over two feet of snow on the whole valley, with so hard a crust that not even a horse could easily break it. But Mr. Thorp did not propose to bring all that band of cattle into the Moxee to let them perish, and he and his sons waged a desperate and successful fight with the Winter. They got out every day to break the crusted snow in order that the cattle and horses might reach the great stores of dry grass beneath. Their efforts were rewarded, for out of three hundred cattle they lost only seven, and none of their sixty horses perished.

GROWING SETTLEMENT

The three families, Thorps, Hensons, and Splawns, may be considered as contributing the nucleus of the settlement of the Yakima Valley. There were, however, a number of others who came more transiently, most of them with Indian wives, during the years immediately following. In 1862, Albert Haines with his wife Letitia Flett, came to Moxee and settled near the Thorps. This marked a very interesting event; that is, the first school in Yakima. Mrs. Haines was the teacher, the scholars were the Thorp children, and the school room was the upstairs of the new Thorp house, a two story log structure much larger than the first. In 1863 three French squawmen, Doshea, Broshea, and

Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.

History of the Yakima Valley, Washington; comprising Yakima, Kittitas, and Benton Counties, Vol. I, Part 32

Author: Lyman, William Denison, 1852-1920 Publication date: 1919 Publisher: [Chicago] S.J. Clarke Number of Pages: 1134

Author: Lyman, William Denison, 1852-1920
Publication date: 1919
Publisher: [Chicago] S.J. Clarke
Number of Pages: 1134