The Life of Isaac Ingalls Stevens, Volume 1 (of 2)

by Hazard Stevens

CAPTAIN MCCLELLAN’s EXPLORATIONS.

It took Captain McClellan a month to fit out his train after he reached Vancouver, on the lower Columbia, so that he did not start on his survey until the last of July. Crossing the Cascade Range by a pass south of Mount Adams, he proceeded northward over the plains on the eastern side of the range to the Yakima valley, moving one hundred and eighty miles in thirty days, and remained there a month longer, during which Mr. Gibbs examined the lower and Lieutenant Duncan the upper valley. Captain McClellan himself, leaving his party in camp, made a hasty examination of the Snoqualmie Pass, at the head of the main Yakima. Then he crossed over a dividing ridge to the Columbia River, and continued up its right or western bank to the Okinakane (Okanogan) River, a distance of ninety miles, spent several days in exploring that and neighboring streams, then ascended the Okinakane (Okanogan) River some fifty miles to Lake Osoyoos, and moved eastward from this point eighty-two miles to the Columbia, opposite Colville, and crossed on the 18th, the very day of Governor Stevens’s arrival at the same point.

McClellan, as appears from his report, took a decidedly unfavorable view of the country, and of a railroad route across the Cascades. He declared in substance that the Columbia River Pass was the only one worth considering, that there was no pass whatever north of it except the Snoqualmie Pass, and gave it as his firm and settled opinion that the snow in winter was from twenty to twenty-five feet deep in that pass.

His examination of the pass was a very hasty and cursory one, with no other instruments than a compass and a barometer, and extended only three miles across the summit. His only information as to the depth of winter snow was the reports of Indians, and the marks of snow on the trees, or what he took to be such. Thus the most important point, the real problem of the field of exploration intrusted to him, namely, the existence and character of the Cascade passes, he failed to determine. He failed utterly to respond to Governor Stevens’s earnest and manly exhortation, “We must not be frightened with long tunnels, or enormous snows, but set ourselves to work to overcome them.” He manifested the same dilatoriness in preparation and moving, the same timidity in action, the same magnifying of difficulties, that later marked and ruined his career as an army commander.

Two railroads now cross the range which he examined,—the Northern Pacific, by a pass just south of the Snoqualmie and north of the Nahchess, the very place of which McClellan reported that “there certainly is none between this (the Snoqualmie) and the Nahchess Pass;” and the Great Northern, by a pass at the head of the Wenachee or Pisquouse River, of which stream he declared, “It appears certain that there can be no pass at its head for a road.” The snows he so much exaggerated have proved no obstacle, and in fact have actually caused less trouble and obstruction in these passes than in the Columbia Pass itself.[6]

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CHAPTER XXI
UPPER COLUMBIA TO PUGET SOUND

Upon learning the results of McClellan’s explorations, Governor Stevens proposed to send him up the Yakima again to carry the survey clear across the Cascades to Puget Sound, and at first that officer seemed willing to undertake the duty. After spending two days at Colville the governor, accompanied by McClellan and his party, moved south in three marches to a camp six miles south of the Spokane River, named Camp Washington, where on October 28 arrived Lieutenant Donelson with the main party. During these days there was a fall of snow covering the ground, which, however, soon melted and disappeared. But it was enough to dismay McClellan. He now demurred to crossing the Cascades, claiming it to be impracticable so late in the fall. It was indeed late; snow had already fallen on the plains, and presumably would be deeper in the mountains; and the Cascades were McClellan’s own particular field, of which he ought to be the best judge. The governor therefore reluctantly, and rather against his better judgment, relinquished the plan of crossing the Snoqualmie Pass that fall, and gave orders for both parties to move by way of Walla Walla and the Dalles to Vancouver, and thence to Olympia, at the head of Puget Sound.

“Had I possessed at Camp Washington,” says the governor, “information which I gained in six days afterwards at Walla Walla, I should have pushed the party over the Cascades in the present condition of the animals; but Captain McClellan was entitled to weight in his judgment of the route, it being upon the special field of his examination.”

The incidents of the march to Camp Washington are thus narrated:—

During our stay at Colville, we visited McDonald’s camp. Near it there is a mission, under the charge of Père Lewis, whom we visited. The Indians about the mission are well disposed and religious. As we returned to the fort, Mr. Stanley was just going into camp, having made a march of thirty-five miles. In the evening we listened to the thrilling stories and exciting legends of McDonald, with which his memory seems to be well stored. He says intelligence had reached him through the Blackfeet of the coming of my party; that the Blackfeet gave most singular accounts of everything connected with us. For instance, they said that our horses had claws like the grizzly bear; they climbed up the steep rocks and held on by their claws; that their necks were like the new moon; and that their neighing was like the sound of distant thunder. McDonald has, of course, given a free translation of the reports made by Indians. We listened to his accounts of his own thrilling adventures of his mountain life, and a description of an encounter with a party of Blackfeet is well worth relating. At the head of a party of three or four men he was met by a band of these Indians, who showed evidences of hostility. By signs he requested the chief of the Blackfeet to advance and meet him, both being unarmed. When the chief assented, and met him half way between the two parties, McDonald caught him by the hair of the head, and, holding him firmly, exacted from the remaining Indians promises to give up their arms, which they accordingly did, and passed on peaceably. He has lived here many years, and is an upright, intelligent, manly, and energetic man.

October 21. We moved off. McDonald presented us with a keg filled with cognac to cheer the hearts of the members of all the parties, and obliged us also to take a supply of port wine. We passed his gristmill on Mill River, the only one in the neighborhood. A march of twelve miles brought us into camp, McDonald accompanying us. We had a glorious supper of smoking steaks and hot cakes, and the stories added to the relish with which it was eaten. McDonald again charmed us with a recital of his thrilling adventures.

October 22. We got off early, and at Brown’s we stopped to purchase horses, and succeeded in obtaining two, one for McClellan and the other for myself. McDonald accompanied me some distance farther, when, bidding each other adieu, I pushed ahead, and, reaching a small stream, I found that McClellan’s party had taken the left bank, and that the captain had gone on to join them. We took the right, and thus avoided a bad crossing in which McClellan’s party became involved. We encamped upon the borders of the stream. Our train is larger and more heavily laden than heretofore, in consequence of the increased supplies. To-day we have thirteen packs. At night we killed a cow purchased of Brown, and we still have an ox in reserve, to be killed when we meet Donelson. The air is cool and fresh, and our appetites keen. I may say here that two pounds of beef and half a pound of flour per man are not too much for a day’s allowance.

October 23. Snow is falling this morning, and it has cleaned our beef admirably. We journeyed but ten miles, encamping near where we had seen Antoine’s family in going to Colville. The snow ceased falling about noon, with five inches upon the ground. It is light, and we think it will disappear in a few days. The Indians inform me that we shall not probably find it south of the Cœur d’Alene, and from their statements it would seem that this river is a dividing line as regards climate.

October 24. We started this morning with the intention of reaching the appointed place of meeting to-night. McClellan, Minter, Osgood, Stanley, and myself pushed ahead, and at noon we reached the old Chemakane Mission, so called from a spring of that name near by. The mission was occupied by Messrs. Walker and Eells, but in 1849, in consequence of the Cuyuse difficulties, it was abandoned. These gentlemen labored ardently for the good of the Indians. Walker was a good farmer and taught them agriculture, and by them his name is now mentioned with great respect. The house occupied by Walker is still standing, but Eells’s has been burned down. The site of the mission is five miles from the Spokane River, in an extensive open valley, well watered and very rich. Here we met Garry and two hundred Spokanes. Garry has forwarded the letter to Donelson, but has received no intelligence of his arrival in the Cœur d’Alene plain. We therefore concluded to encamp here, and to-morrow McClellan and myself are to accompany Garry to the Spokane House. The Colville or Slawntebus and Chemakane valleys have a productive soil, and are from one to three miles wide, and bordered by low hills, covered with larch, pine, and spruce, and having also a productive soil. In the evening the Indians clustered around our fire, and manifested much pleasure in our treatment of them. I have now seen a great deal of Garry, and am much pleased with him. Beneath a quiet exterior he shows himself to be a man of judgment, forecast, and great reliability, and I could see in my interview with his band the ascendency he possesses over them.

In the Colville valley there is a line of settlements twenty-eight miles long. The settlers are persons formerly connected with the Hudson Bay Company, and they are anxious to become naturalized, and have the lands they now occupy transferred to themselves. I informed them that I could only express my hopes that their case would be met by the passage of a special act. They are extensive farmers, and raise a great deal of wheat.

October 25. Having left the necessary directions for moving camp to the place of meeting with Donelson, Captain McClellan and myself accompanied Garry to the Spokane House. The road was slippery in consequence of the melting of the snow, and we were obliged frequently to dismount. We found Garry’s family in a comfortable lodge, and he informed us that he always had on hand flour, sugar, and coffee, with which to make his friends comfortable. We then went to our new camp south of the Spokane, which had been established whilst we were visiting Garry’s place. From the Chemakane Mission the train left the river, and, passing through a rolling country covered with open pine woods, in five miles reached the Spokane, and crossing it by a good and winding ford, ascended the plain, and in six miles, the first two of which was through open pine, reached Camp Washington.

October 26, 27, 28, and 29. During these days I was occupied at our camp (Camp Washington) in making the arrangements for moving westward. Lieutenant Donelson arrived on the 28th, and we all sat down to a fine supper prepared for the occasion. All the members of the exploration were in fine spirits; our table was spread under a canopy, and upon it a great variety of dishes appeared, roasted beef, bouillon, steaks, and abundance of hot bread, coffee, sugar, and our friend McDonald’s good cheer. But the best dish was a beef’s head cooked by friend Minter in Texas fashion. It was placed in a hole in the ground on a layer of hot coals, with moss and leaves around it to protect it from the dirt, and then covered up. There it remained for some five or six hours, when, removing it, the skin came off without difficulty, and it presented a very tempting dish, and was enjoyed by every member of the party.

Having given the necessary instructions to McClellan and Donelson to proceed with their parties to the Walla Walla, thence to the Dalles, Vancouver, and Olympia, making careful survey of the country on the route, the governor, with his small party, pushed on ahead, having Garry and his brother as guides. Starting late in the afternoon of the 29th, they journeyed thirteen miles over undulating hills and a high table-land, and encamped upon a small stream called Se-cule-eel-qua, with fine grass and fertile soil.

October 30. We commenced to move at sunrise, and at three P.M. encamped on a small lake twenty-two miles from our place of departure in the morning. In view of this camp were the graves of a number of Spokane Indians, indicated by mounds of stones, designed to protect the bodies from the wolves, and by poles supported in an upright position by the stones. It was the usage until within a few years past, for the Spokanes and other northern tribes towards the Pacific to slay the horses and cattle of the deceased at his grave, and also to sacrifice his other property, but they are gradually relinquishing this pernicious practice, under the influence of the counsels and example of the white man.

October 31. We continued to follow the general course of the stream upon whose banks we were encamped, and after riding eight miles we crossed another small stream, rising in a chain of small lakes south of our last camp. These lakes abound in wild fowl, which at this season are very plentiful, and they are therefore much resorted to by the Spokanes and other Indians. We saw in one of these lakes, surrounded by ducks and geese, a pair of white swans, which remained to challenge our admiration after their companions had been frightened away by our approach.

Garry assures us that there is a remarkable lake called En-chush-chesh-she-luxum, or Never Freezing Water, about thirty miles to the east of this place. It is much larger than any of the lakes just mentioned, and so completely surrounded by high and precipitous rocks that it is impossible to descend to the water. It is said never to freeze, even in the most severe winter. The Indians believe that it is inhabited by buffalo, elk, deer, and all other kinds of game, which, they say, may be seen in the clear, transparent element. He also narrates the story of a superstition respecting a point of painted rock in Pend Oreille Lake, situated near the place now occupied by Michal Ogden. The Indians, he says, do not venture to pass this point, fearing that the Great Spirit may, as related in the legends, create a commotion in the water and cause them to be swallowed up in the waves. The painted rocks are very high, and bear effigies of men and beasts and other characters, made, as the Indians believe, by a race of men who preceded them as inhabitants of the land.

Our route to-day has been through a rocky and broken country, and after a march of thirty-two miles we encamped on a small stream called En-cha-rae-nae, flowing from the lake where we last halted, near a number of natural mounds.

November 1. Our course lay down the valley of the En-cha-rae-nae, a rugged way, beset with deep clefts in the volcanic rocks. We crossed the Pelouse River near the mouth of the former, and near the stream flowing from the never freezing lake, and twelve miles from the mouth of the Pelouse. Four miles from our place of crossing the Pelouse runs through a deep cañon, surrounded by isolated volcanic buttes, to its junction with Snake River. At two P.M. we arrived at the mouth of the Pelouse, and, crossing Snake River, we encamped on its southern bank, several Pelouse Indians accompanying us, and among them a chief from a band but a few miles distant from our camp, Wi-ti-my-hoy-she. He exhibited a medal of Thomas Jefferson, dated 1801, given to his grandfather, as he alleges, by Lewis and Clark.

November 2. I have referred in an early stage of this narrative to the condition of my health, and will state that not a day was I on the road from Fort Benton to this point that I did not suffer much. The day I made my long ride to Colville, I was so feeble and exhausted that, on making my noon halt after moving fifteen miles, I was obliged to have my bed spread in order to rest; but the idea of meeting gentlemen so soon, from whom I had been so long separated, enabled me to bear the fatigue of my afternoon fifty miles’ ride to Colville. Although in great suffering, I determined to move with Garry from Snake River to Fort Walla Walla to-day, leaving Mr. Stanley to come on with my party and train in two days. I desired to save a day in order to collect information at Walla Walla, and to visit the Walla Walla valley. Accordingly we set off. It required me three hours to get my courage up to the sticking-point, so that I could bear the pain growing out of traveling at a gait faster than a walk; but, getting warm in the saddle, we increased our speed, and on reaching the Touchet we dismounted for a slight halt. Pushing on a little before two o’clock, we reached Fort Walla Walla at sundown, moving the last twenty-five miles at the rate of about eight miles an hour, and were there hospitably received by Mr. Pembrum, the factor in charge, and after a little conversation I refreshed myself with reading some late papers. On the road my time was much occupied with studying the deportment of the mountain ranges in view, and all the peculiarities of the country about me, to judge something of its winter climate and the probable fall of snow; and on reaching Walla Walla I became satisfied from these things, and especially from a view of the highest spur of the Blue Mountains in sight, that the snows of the Cascades could not be so formidable as they had been represented. I accordingly determined to search thoroughly into this matter at Walla Walla.

November 3–8. I remained in the Walla Walla country during these days, spending two days up the valley and the remainder at the fort. Mr. Stanley, with the train, reached the fort on the 3d, and,

November 4, we started upon the trip through the valley, riding upon our horses. Arriving at the Hudson Bay farm, we exchanged them for fresh ones. This farm is eighteen miles from Walla Walla, and is a fine tract of land, well adapted to grazing or cultivation. It is naturally bounded by streams, and is equivalent to a mile square. There is the richest grass here that we have seen since leaving St. Mary’s. From this we went to McBane’s house, a retired factor of the company, from whence we had a fine view of the southern portion of the valley, which is watered by many tributaries from the Blue Mountains. Thirty miles from Walla Walla, and near McBane’s, lives Father Chirouse, a missionary of the Catholic order, who with two laymen exercises his influence among the surrounding tribes.

November 5. We remained with Mr. McBane overnight, and returned to the fort to-day by way of the Whitman Mission, now occupied by Bumford and Brooke. They were harvesting, and I saw as fine potatoes as ever I beheld, many weighing two pounds, and one five and a half. Their carrots and beets, too, were of extraordinary size. Mr. Whitman must have done a great deal of good for the Indians. His mission was situated upon a fine tract of land, and he had erected a saw and grist mill. From Bumford’s to the mouth of the Touchet are many farms, mostly occupied by the retired employees of the Hudson Bay Company. On our return we met Pu-pu-mox-mox, the Walla Walla chief, known and respected far and wide. He possesses not so much intelligence and energy as Garry, but he has some gifts of which the latter is deprived. He is of dignified manner, and well qualified to manage men. He owns over two thousand horses, besides many cattle, and has a farm near that of the Hudson Bay Company. On the occurrence of the Cuyuse war, he was invited to join them, but steadily refused. After their destruction of the mission, he was asked to share the spoils, and again refused. They then taunted him with being afraid of the whites, to which he replied: “I am not afraid of the whites, nor am I afraid of the Cuyuses. I defy your whole band. I will plant my three lodges on the border of my own territory at the mouth of the Touchet, and there I will meet you if you dare to attack me.” He accordingly moved his lodges to this point, and remained there three or four weeks. Stanley was on his way from Walker and Eells’s Mission to Whitman’s Mission, and indeed was actually within three miles of the latter, when he heard of the terrible tragedy which had been enacted there, and the information was brought to him by an Indian of Pu-pu-mox-mox’s band. Pu-pu-mox-mox has saved up a large amount of money (probably as much as $5000); still he is generous, and frequently gives an ox and other articles of value to the neighbors. Some of his people having made a contract to ferry the emigrants across the river, who crossed the Cascades this year, and then having refused to execute it, he compelled them to carry it out faithfully, and, mounting his horse, he thrashed them until they complied. He has the air of a substantial farmer.

On the 6th Lieutenant Donelson and on the 7th Captain McClellan reached old Fort Walla Walla with the main parties. Governor Stevens was now satisfied, both from his own observations and from information furnished by Pembrum, Pu-pu-mox-mox, and others, among them a voyageur who had actually crossed the Cascades in the month of December, that it was not yet too late to send a party across these mountains. Accordingly he directed Mr. Lander to proceed up the Yakima and over the Nahchess Pass in order to run the line to the Sound.

The governor had a remarkable faculty for getting information from people of every kind and condition, Hudson Bay Company men, settlers, voyageurs, and Indians, and always took great pains to learn all they could impart, while his keen and sound judgment enabled him to distinguish the chaff from the wheat in their reports.

Having provided fresh animals for Mr. Lander, given him his written instructions, and in conversation urged upon him the entire feasibility of the survey intrusted to him, the governor, with Mr. Stanley, on November 8 started down the Columbia in a canoe managed by voyageurs, and reached the Dalles on the 12th. Says the governor:—

“We took with us two days’ provisions, and were four days in reaching the Dalles, having been detained nearly two days in camp by a high wind which blew up the river, but we eked out our scanty stores by the salmon generously furnished us by the Indian bands near us. At the principal rapids I got out and observed the movements of the canoe through them, and, from the best examination which I was able to make, I became at once convinced that the river was probably navigable for steamers. I remained at the Dalles on the 13th to make arrangements for the moving forward of the parties and for herding the animals, looking to a resumption of the survey, where I was the guest of Major Rains, and had a most pleasant time, meeting old acquaintances and making new ones with the gentlemen of the post. On the 14th I reached the Cascades, where I passed the night. Here I met several gentlemen—men who had crossed the plains, and who had made farms in several States and in Oregon or Washington—who had carefully examined the Yakima country for new locations, and who impressed me with the importance of it as an agricultural and grazing country. November 15 we went down the river in a canoe, and on the 16th reached Vancouver, where I remained the 17th, 18th, and 19th as the guest of Colonel Bonneville, and where I also became acquainted with the officers of the Hudson Bay Company.

“Leaving Vancouver on the 20th, I reached Olympia on the 25th, where for the first time I saw the waters of Puget Sound. No special incident worthy of remark occurred on the journey, except that I was four days going up the Cowlitz in drenching rains, and two nights had the pleasure of camping out. I will now advise voyageurs in the interior, when they get suddenly into the rains west of the Cascades, to take off their buckskin underclothing. I neglected to do this, and among the many agreeabilities of this trip up the Cowlitz was to have the underclothing of buckskin wet entirely through. I was enabled to examine the country pretty carefully all the way to Olympia, and had with me a very intelligent man, who could point out localities and inform me about the country not in view of the road; and I saw that not only was it entirely practicable for a railroad line to the Sound, but that the work was light, and the material for construction of all kinds entirely inexhaustible.

“After considerable delays at Vancouver, the gentlemen of the parties under Captain McClellan and Lieutenant Donelson arrived at Olympia for office duty, being preceded a few days by Mr. Lander, who for reasons not conclusive to my mind did not persevere in the examination of the Nahchess Pass. One of his reasons for not continuing his examination was that it was not on the railroad line, which did not apply, because that fact was well known to him previously, having been announced to him positively in my written instructions. I did not censure Mr. Lander for not continuing on this duty, as I know the perplexity of mind in which one is placed by the contradictory character of the information gained; but I resolved to get my line to the Sound, and accordingly dispatched an express to the Walla Walla, directing Mr. Tinkham on his arrival at that point to cross to Puget Sound by the Snoqualmie Pass, my object being twofold,—to get at some facts which would decisively settle the question of the depth of snow, in regard to which Captain McClellan and myself differed, as well as really to connect our work with the Sound itself.”

Thus Lander purposely balked the task intrusted to him, and threw away another fine opportunity of achieving credit for himself.

Upon McClellan’s arrival at Olympia, Governor Stevens directed him to take up from the Sound the reconnoissance for a railroad line to the Snoqualmie Pass, connecting with his examination on the eastern side, which had extended three miles across the summit. But again McClellan failed to accomplish the task, deterred as usual by the reports of Indians, and magnified difficulties. Leaving Olympia December 23, with Mr Minter, civil engineer, and four men, he spent five days at Steilacoom in a vain attempt to procure horses and guides for the Snoqualmie Falls, intending to proceed thence on snowshoes. Then he went by canoe down the Sound and up the Snohomish River to the falls, and pushed forward on foot four miles to the prairie just above the falls.

“I found,” he reports, “the prairie to be about as represented,—in places bare, but in others with three or four inches of snow. Leaving my companions at the Indian bivouac to make the best preparations they could for passing the night (for we had neither tent, blanket, nor overcoat), I went forward on the trail with two Indians.

“As soon as we left the prairie the ground became entirely covered with snow; it soon became a foot deep in the shallowest spots, and was constantly increasing. All signs of a trail were obliterated,—the underbrush very thick and loaded with snow,—the snow unfit for snowshoes, according to the Indians. I now turned back to our bivouac, and there awaited the arrival of an Indian who was out hunting, and who was said to possess much information about the country. He soon arrived, and proved to be a very intelligent Yakima, whom I had seen on the other side of the mountains in the summer. He had been hunting in the direction I wished to go, and stated that the snow soon increased to ‘waist-deep’ long before reaching the Nooksai-Nooksai, and that it was positively impracticable to use snowshoes. He also said that the Indians did not pretend to cross over the mountains at this season, but waited till about the end of March, and then took their horses over.

“Next morning, after again questioning the Indian, I reluctantly determined to return, being forced to the conclusion that, if the attempt to reach the pass was not wholly impracticable, it was at least inexpedient under all the circumstances in which I was placed.”[7]

Could any man but McClellan have seriously asserted that “it was positively impracticable to use snowshoes” on snow, and that, too, on the authority of Indians, who were notoriously unreliable, and who, in their jealousy of white exploration, habitually exaggerated the difficulties of the country? This seems the very acme of imaginary obstacles. It was January 10 that McClellan turned back. Had he manfully taken to his snowshoes, he could have reached the summit in three or four days, and connected with his reconnoissance on the eastern side, and this was soon demonstrated to his deep disgust.

Far different was the action and spirit of Tinkham. He had just arrived at Walla Walla from a remarkable and arduous trip, during which he crossed the Rocky Mountains by the Marias Pass, proceeded to Fort Benton, recrossed the mountains by a more southern pass to the Bitter Root valley, and thence crossed the Bitter Root Range on snowshoes by the rugged southern Nez Perces trail, when he received Governor Stevens’s instructions to push to the Sound by way of the Snoqualmie Pass. Starting from Walla Walla on January 7 with two Indians, he proceeded up the Yakima to its head on horseback, and there leaving his animals, he crossed the mountains on snowshoes, and reached Seattle on January 26, seven days after leaving the eastern base of the divide, and twenty days from Walla Walla. He carefully measured the depth of snow and reported:—

“From Lake Kitchelus to the summit, some five miles, and where occurs the deepest snow, the average measurement was about six feet, but frequently running as high as seven feet. Passing on to the west side of the Cascades, the snow rapidly disappears; fourteen miles from the summit there was but eight inches of snow, and thence it gradually faded away as approach was made to the shores of the Sound: for only a few miles was the snow six feet deep; the whole breadth over twelve inches deep was somewhat less than sixty miles in extent.”

Thus Tinkham actually crossed the range and reached the Sound, making the very trip that McClellan pronounced “impracticable” and would not even try, only ten days after the latter’s failure.

But McClellan’s pride was hurt by this incident. He took Governor Stevens’s opinion as to the snow question, and his action in sending Tinkham across the pass, in high dudgeon as a reflection on himself, and, regardless of the true friendship shown him and benefits conferred upon him by the governor, treated him with marked coldness. In his usual generous and magnanimous way, Governor Stevens took no notice of this changed attitude of McClellan, but gave him all possible credit in his reports. Some years afterwards, when Governor Stevens was in Congress, their mutual friend, Captain J.G. Foster, came to him, and said that McClellan wished to meet him again and renew their old friendship. Accordingly they met at Willard’s, and McClellan appeared as cordial and agreeable as of old.

Captain McClellan had been instructed, after completing his reconnoissance of the Snoqualmie Pass, to examine the harbors on the eastern shore of the Sound as far as Bellingham Bay. But he gave up this duty also, after proceeding a single day’s trip in canoes about twenty miles north of the mouth of the Snohomish River to the northern extremity of McDonough or Camano Island, where he encamped for the night, alleging as usual the inclemency of the weather: “During that night six inches of snow fell and a violent gale arose, so that on the next day we were unable to proceed. On the next day (14th), the wind still continuing dead ahead and very violent, I turned back,” etc.

Yet at this very time Governor Stevens was making a complete tour of the Sound in a small open sailboat, regardless of wind and weather.

McClellan also failed to do anything towards opening the military road across the Cascades between Steilacoom and Fort Walla Walla; and Lieutenant Richard Arnold, under the governor’s general supervision, relieved him of the charge of the road, and completed it in 1854.

It will be remembered how Governor Stevens had placed this road in McClellan’s hands, had furnished him with information and correspondence relating to it, and had advised him to consult with the prominent settlers in regard to the best location of it. Of these people the governor remarks in his report:—

“They have crossed the mountains, and made the long distance from the valley of the Mississippi to their homes on the Pacific; they have done so frequently, having to cut out roads as they went, and knowing little of the difficulties before them. They are therefore men of observation, of experience, of enterprise, and men who at home had by industry and frugality secured a competency and the respect of their neighbors; for it must be known that our emigrants travel in parties, and those go together who were acquaintances at home, because they mutually confide in each other. I was struck with the high qualities of the frontier people, and soon learned how to confide in them and gather information from them.”

Contrast with this McClellan’s assertions in his letter to Secretary of War Davis, of September 18, 1853:—

“But the result of my short experience in this country has been that not the slightest faith or confidence is to be placed in information derived from the employees of the Hudson Bay Company, or from the inhabitants of the Territory; in every instance, when I have acted upon information thus obtained, I have been altogether deceived and misled.”

But he was ready enough to adopt the reports of Indians in support of obstacles which existed chiefly in his own imagination.

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CHAPTER XXII
ORGANIZING CIVIL GOVERNMENT.—THE INDIAN SERVICE

It was indeed a wild country, untouched by civilization, and a scanty white population sparsely sprinkled over the immense area that were awaiting the arrival of Governor Stevens to organize civil government, and shape the destinies of the future. A mere handful of settlers, 3965 all told, were widely scattered over western Washington, between the lower Columbia and the Strait of Fuca. A small hamlet clustered around the military post at Vancouver. A few settlers were spread wide apart along the Columbia, among whom were Columbia Lancaster on Lewis River; Seth Catlin, Dr. Nathaniel Ostrander, and the Huntingtons about the mouth of the Cowlitz; Alexander S. Abernethy at Oak Point; and Judge William Strong at Cathlamet. Some oystermen in Shoalwater Bay were taking shellfish for the San Francisco market. At Cowlitz Landing, thirty miles up that river, were extensive prairies, where farms had been cultivated by the Hudson Bay Company, under the name of the Puget Sound Agricultural Company, for fifteen years; and here were a few Americans and a number of Scotch and Canadians, former employees of that company, and now looking forward to becoming American citizens, and settling down upon their own “claims” under the Donation Act, which gave 320 acres to every settler, and as much more to his wife. A score of hardy pioneers had settled upon the scattered prairies between the Cowlitz Farms and the Sound; among them were John R. Jackson, typical English yeoman, on his prairie, ten miles from the Cowlitz; S.S. Saunders, on Saunders’s Bottom, where now stands the town of Chehalis; George Washington, a colored man, on the next prairie, the site of Centralia; Judge Sidney S. Ford on his prairie on the Chehalis River, below the mouth of the Skookumchuck Creek; W.B. Goodell, B.L. Henness, and Stephen Hodgdon on Grand Mound Prairie; A.B. Rabbeson and W.W. Plumb on Mound Prairie. A number of settlers had taken up the prairies about Olympia, the principal of whom were W.O. Bush, Gabriel Jones, William Rutledge, and David Kendrick on Bush Prairie; J.N. Low, Andrew J. Chambers, Nathan Eaton, Stephen D. Ruddell, and Urban E. Hicks on Chambers’s Prairie; David J. Chambers on the prairie of his name. James McAlister and William Packwood were on the Nisqually Bottom, at the mouth of the river, just north of which, on the verge of the Nisqually plains, was situated the Hudson Bay Company post, Fort Nisqually, a parallelogram of log buildings and stockade, under charge of Dr. W.F. Tolmie, a warm-hearted and true Scot. Great herds of Spanish cattle, the property of this company, roamed over the Nisqually plains, little cared for and more than half wild, and, it is to be feared, occasionally fell prey to the rifles of the hungry American emigrants. Two miles below Olympia, on the east side of the bay, was located a Catholic mission under Fathers Ricard and Blanchet, where were a large building, an orchard, and a garden. They had made a number of converts among the Indians.

Towns, each as yet little more than a “claim” and a name, but each in the hope and firm belief of its founders destined to future greatness, were just started at Steilacoom, by Lafayette Balch; at Seattle, by Dr. D. S. Maynard, H.L. Yesler, and the Dennys; at Port Townsend, by F.W. Pettygrove and L.B. Hastings; and at Bellingham Bay, by Henry Roder and Edward Eldridge.

Save the muddy track from the Cowlitz to Olympia and thence to Steilacoom, and a few local trails, roads there were none. Communication was chiefly by water, almost wholly in canoes manned by Indians. The monthly steamer from San Francisco and a little river steamboat plying daily between Vancouver and Portland alone vexed with their keels the mighty Columbia; while it was not until the next year that reckless, harum-scarum Captain Jack Scranton ran the Major Tompkins, a small black steamer, once a week around the Sound, and had no rival. Here was this great wooded country without roads, the unrivaled waterways without steamers, the adventurous, vigorous white population without laws, numerous tribes of Indians without treaties, and the Hudson Bay Company’s rights and possessions without settlement. To add to the difficulties and confusion of the situation, Congress, by the Donation Acts, held out a standing invitation to the American settlers to seize and settle upon any land, surveyed or unsurveyed, without waiting to extinguish the Indian title, or define the lands guaranteed by solemn treaty to the foreign company, and already the Indians and the Hudson Bay Company were growing daily more and more restless and indignant at the encroachments of the pushing settlers upon their choicest spots. Truly a situation fraught with difficulties and dangers, where everything was to be done and nothing yet begun.

It is a great but common mistake to suppose that the early American settlers of Washington were a set of lawless, rough, and ignorant borderers. In fact they compare favorably with the early settlers of any of the States. As a rule they were men of more than average force of character, vigorous, honest, intelligent, law-abiding, and patriotic,—men who had brought their families to carve out homes in the wilderness, and many of them men of education and of standing in their former abodes. Among them could be found the best blood of New England, the sturdy and kindly yeomanry of Virginia and Kentucky, and men from all the States of the Middle West from Ohio to Arkansas. Most of them had slowly wended their way across the great plains, overcoming every obstacle, and suffering untold privations; others had come by sea around Cape Horn, or across the Isthmus. They were all true Americans, patriotic and brave, and filled with sanguine hopes of, and firm faith in, the future growth and greatness of the new country which they had come to make blossom like the rose. Governor Stevens, as has been shown, at once appreciated the character of these people.

After the arduous and exposed journey up the Cowlitz by canoe,—where the Indian crew had to gain foot by foot against the furious current of the flooded river, oftentimes pulling the frail craft along by the overhanging bushes,—and over the muddy trail by horseback, Governor Stevens reached Olympia on November 25, 1853, just five months and nineteen days since starting from St. Paul. He found here awaiting his arrival the new territorial secretary, Charles M. Mason, brother to his old friend Colonel James Mason, of the engineers, who had just come out by the Isthmus route. Mason was of distinguished appearance and bearing, with fine dark eyes and hair, fair, frank face, and charming but unobtrusive manner. He was highly educated, gifted with unusual ability, and a noble and amiable disposition, and was beloved by all who knew him. The other territorial officers on the ground were: Edward Lander, chief justice, and Victor Monroe, associate justice; J.V. Clendenin, district attorney; J. Patten Anderson, marshal; and Simpson P. Moses, collector of customs.

CHARLES H. MASON
Secretary of Washington Territory

Among the settlers welcoming their new governor were: Edmund Sylvester, the founder of Olympia; Colonel William Cock, Shirley Ensign, D.R. Bigelow, George A. Barnes, H.A. Goldsborough, John M. Swan, C.H. Hale, Judge B.F. Yantis, Judge Gilmore Hayes, John G. Parker, Quincy A. Brooks, Dr. G.K. Willard, Colonel M. T. Simmons, Captain Clanrick Crosby, Ira Ward, James Biles, Joseph Cushman, S.W. Percival, Edwin Marsh, R.M. Walker, Levi and James Offut, J.C. Head, W. Dobbins, Isaac Hawk, Rev. G.F. Whitworth, Jared S. Hurd, H.R. Woodward, B.F. Brown, and M. Hurd.

The arrival of the governor and his party was the great event for the little town, as well as for the new Territory generally, and warm and hearty was his greeting by the pioneers. And when shortly afterwards, December 19, the governor delivered a lecture, giving a description of his exploration and an exposition of the Northern route, their hopes and expectations were raised to the highest point, and they already saw in the mind’s eye the iron horse speeding across the plains and through the mighty forests, and the full-flowing tide of immigration following its advent.

Without delay the governor issued his proclamation, as empowered by the organic act marking out and establishing election districts, appointing time (January 30) and places for holding the elections, for a delegate in Congress and members of the legislature, and summoning that body to meet in Olympia on the 28th of February.

The Indian service next engaged his attention. He appointed Colonel M.T. Simmons Indian agent for the Puget Sound Indians, with B.F. Shaw and O. Cushman as interpreters and assistants, and sent them to visit the different tribes and bands, to assure them of the protection and guidance of the Great Father in Washington, to urge them to cultivate the soil and “follow the white man’s road,” that is, to adopt the habits of civilized life; and to impress upon them the necessity of making treaties, in order to prevent future trouble and secure them peace and safety. He also appointed A.J. Bolon agent for the Indians east of the Cascades, and William H. Tappan agent for the coast and river Indians on the Chehalis and Columbia rivers, Gray’s Harbor, and Shoalwater Bay.

Governor Stevens deeply commiserated the condition and probable future of the Indians under his charge, and felt the greatest interest and concern in their welfare and improvement. How wise, generous, and beneficent a policy he established in his treaties, with what great kindness, justice, and firmness he uniformly treated them, will be shown later in this work. It is enough to say now that the Indians came to know him as their friend and protector, and to this day hold his memory in reverence; that the treaties he made and the policy he inaugurated have remained in force to the present time, and that under them the Indians of Washington have more fully preserved their rights and improved their condition than the aborigines of any other State.

Having thus started the civil government and Indian service, and set the young men of the exploration hard at work preparing the reports, and, as already related, dispatched McClellan to run the line from the Sound to the Snoqualmie Pass, the governor took the Sarah Stone, a small sailboat, or “plunger,” and, accompanied by Mr. George Gibbs, went down the Sound in person, in order, as he states, “to visit and take a census of the Indian tribes, learn something of the general character of the Sound and its harbors, and to visit Vancouver Island and its principal port, Victoria.

“In this trip I visited Steilacoom, Seattle, Skagit Head, Penn’s Cove, the mouths of the Skagit and Samish rivers, Bellingham Bay, passed up the channel De Rosario and down the channel De Haro to Victoria, and on my return made Port Townsend and several other points on the western shore of the Sound. We examined the coal mines back of Seattle and Bellingham Bay, and saw a large body of Indians of nearly all the tribes. I became greatly impressed with the important advantages of Seattle, and also with the importance of the disputed islands.”

In a report to the Secretary of War, written immediately after this trip, he remarks:—

“I was agreeably impressed with Elliott’s Bay, on which are the flourishing towns of Seattle and Alki, and I agree entirely in the opinion of Captain McClellan that it is the best harbor on the Sound, and unless the approach to it from the pass should, on a more minute examination, prove less favorable than to some other point, which is hardly to be expected, that it is the proper terminus of the railroad.”

In his reports Seattle is assumed as the terminus on the Sound, and all the distances measured and calculations of cost, etc., are made with reference to that point as the western end of the route.

The above is a provokingly brief and meagre record of this trip, which occupied the whole month of January, the same month that McClellan, after balking the Snoqualmie survey, turned back from Camano Island and abandoned the examination of the lower Sound in consequence of the inclemency of the weather. The governor’s trip could have been no holiday excursion, in an open sailboat in that stormy, rainy season, and among the swift tides and fierce gales of the lower Sound. But it was fruitful in results. He grasped with the acute and discriminating eye of an engineer the whole system of waters and the several harbors and points of importance, talked with the principal men of each place and gleaned all the information they could furnish, and gained a comprehensive and correct idea of the numbers, distribution, and character of the Indians.

Moreover, he met at Victoria Governor Sir James Douglass and the other officers there of the Hudson Bay Company, and discussed with them their claims within our borders. He had now visited and personally examined all but one (Fort Okanogan) of that company’s posts within his territory, Colville, Walla Walla, Vancouver, Cowlitz Farms, and Nisqually, and had discussed their claims with the officers in charge of them, and with the chief factor, Sir James Douglass. As the result of this investigation he made, on his return to Olympia, an exhaustive report to the Secretary of State, setting forth in detail the actual holdings and improvements of the company at each point. He estimated that their value could not exceed $300,000, and recommended that a commission be appointed to adjudicate the claims, and that such sum be appropriated by Congress to extinguish them. Secretary Marcy adopted his views and recommendations, and transmitted them to Congress, and a bill appointing the commission and making the appropriation passed the Senate the following session, but failed in the House. These claims remained a bone of contention between the countries for many years, until finally Great Britain, by means of a joint commission, and by sticking to the most extravagant demands with true bulldog tenacity, succeeded in wringing nearly a million dollars from the United States.

At the election Columbia Lancaster was chosen delegate in Congress. He was a lawyer by profession, and a man of ability and education.

The legislature assembled on the appointed day, and Governor Stevens delivered his first message. Briefly reviewing the great natural resources of the Territory and its commercial advantages, with its unrivaled harbors and location to control in due time the trade of China and Japan, he recommended the adoption of a code of laws, the organization of the country east of the Cascades into counties, a school system with military training in the higher schools, and the organization of the militia. The latter he declared necessary in view of their remote situation, compelling them to rely upon themselves in case of war, for a time at least, and to enable them to draw arms and ammunition from the general government, which could be issued only to an organized militia force. He dwelt on the importance of extinguishing the Indian title and the claims of the Hudson Bay and Puget Sound Agricultural Companies, and settling the boundary line on British territory, and recommended them to memorialize Congress in behalf of these measures. He informed them that, under instructions from the Secretary of State, he had already notified the foreign Fur Company that it could not be allowed to trade with Indians within the Territory, and would be given until July to wind up their affairs. He also urged them to ask Congress for a surveyor-general and a land office, for more rapid surveys of public land, so that they might be kept in advance of settlement; to amend the land laws by facilitating the acquisition of title, and by placing single women on the same footing with married women; for a grant of lands for a university; for improved mail service; for roads to Walla Walla, to Vancouver, and to Bellingham Bay along the eastern shore of the Sound; and for continuing the geographical and geological surveys already begun. He boldly advocated the construction of three railroads across the continent, undoubtedly the first to foresee the necessity of more than a single line. From this time he always advocated three transcontinental roads.

All these recommendations were promptly adopted by the legislature, except as regarded the militia, concerning which no action was taken; an unfortunate neglect, which left the people almost defenseless when the Indian war broke out less than two years later.

Soon after arriving at Olympia, Governor Stevens writes his friend Halleck announcing his arrival and the successful achievement of the exploration. In this letter he expresses the opinion that the waters of San Francisco Bay and Puget Sound should both have their connections with the States by railroad.

He asks Halleck how lands should be donated and managed for the establishment of a university in Washington Territory, and his views as to a plan, etc.

January 9 he writes Joseph Grinnell & Co., of New York, a great mercantile and shipping and whaling firm, suggesting to them the establishing of a whaling and fishing depot on one of the harbors of the lower Sound.

Halleck writes a cordial letter in reply to the governor’s, and gives him a glimpse “behind the curtain” of California and Southern Democratic politics, which throws light on Jefferson Davis’s action in shutting off the further exploration of the Northern route.

“I have by no means lost my interest in the Democratic party, or the great public questions of the day. The first and most important of these is the great continental railroad. Present examinations would seem almost conclusive against Benton’s central project. If so, this road must run from some point in New Mexico to some pass near Los Angeles, and thence to San Francisco (and San Diego, perhaps).

“If this southern route should be selected, it would lead to another northern route, perhaps the one explored by yourself to Puget Sound. Even if a single road should be adopted on the central line, it must fork to San Francisco and Puget Sound, the two great termini of the Pacific coast.

“The pro-slavery extension party will work very hard against the North Pacific States, which must of necessity remain free. The first branch of this project was to call a new convention in California dividing it into two States, making the southern one a slave State, with San Diego as the port and terminus of a railroad through Texas. Circulars and letters to that effect were sent to pro-slavery men in California, and the attempt made to divide the State, but it failed. The next move was to acquire Lower California and part of Sonora and Chihuahua, making Guaymas the terminus, and the newly acquired territory slave States. Two separate plans were set on foot for the same object, the Walker ‘filibustering’ expedition against Lower California and Sonora, and Gadsden’s treaty with Santa Anna. The former is thus far a most complete and contemptible failure, but rumor says the latter is likely to be successful, and will be undoubtedly, if backed with sufficient money. If the territory is acquired, it will be slave territory, and a most tremendous effort will be made to run a railroad if not the railroad from Texas to Guaymas, with a branch to San Francisco.”

Amid all these pressing and engrossing official duties the governor found time to purchase his future homestead in Olympia, Block 84, and also a tract of ten acres a little farther back, where Maple Park is now situated. He also contracted for the purchase of the north half of the Walker Donation claim, a tract of three hundred and twenty acres situated a mile and a half south of the town and half way to Tumwater. All these tracts were then buried in the dense and tall fir forest; but when the country was cleared, it appeared that the governor had selected them with unerring judgment, for they are the finest sites in the town or vicinity.

During all this time the governor and the officers and scientific men of the exploration were hard at work on the reports of their operations, working up the observations, and classifying the collections. As McClellan, Donelson, Lander, Suckley, Gibbs, Arnold, Tinkham, and Grover successively reached Olympia, bringing fresh contributions of information gathered in their trips, each took hold of the work. The offices of the survey were in two small, one-storied buildings on the west side of Main Street, between Second and Third, hired of Father Ricard, and presented a busy scene, filled with desks, tables, instruments, collections, maps, and papers, among which the young men were writing and working for dear life.

Lieutenant Arnold and Dr. Suckley executed the reconnoissances intrusted to them most satisfactorily. Lieutenant Grover, starting from Fort Benton in January with his dog-train, crossed the main range to the Bitter Root valley, finding only eight inches of snow, and thence continued with horses down Clark’s Fork and Pend Oreille Lake and to the Dalles. On reaching Vancouver the governor dispatched an express to Lieutenant Mullan by Spokane Garry, who had accompanied him to that point, and in January he sent wagonmaster Higgins with a second express to the same point. Thus, by these expresses going and returning, he had the route between the Bitter Root valley and Olympia traversed four times in addition to Grover’s trip. Lieutenant Mullan crossed the main continental divide six times that winter, extending his trips to Fort Hall, on the upper Snake River, and traveling nearly a thousand miles. The explorations made by the young officers, including Tinkham and Doty, were very remarkable and valuable, and were attended at times with great exertions and privations, and full accounts of them are given in the final report.

Thus, by his winter posts and parties, the governor was solving, in the most complete and satisfactory manner, the questions of mountain snows and climates. From Olympia he reported to Secretary of War Davis the results of the explorations, and particularly on these points. He urged that the posts be continued, and a closer examination made of the more favorable mountain passes, and that lines be surveyed from the Northern route to Great Salt Lake and to San Francisco.

At this juncture Governor Stevens received a curt and peremptory order from Secretary Davis, disapproving his arrangements, and ordering him to disband the winter parties and bring his operations to a close. Acknowledging the receipt of the order, February 13, he declares that it shall be promptly obeyed, and continues:—

“But I earnestly submit to the department the importance of the continuation of these surveys, and indulge the hope that Congress will make liberal appropriations, both in a deficiency bill and in the general appropriation bill, in order that the field now so well entered upon may be fully occupied.

“I will respectfully call the attention of the department to the peculiar circumstances of my exploration, which will, it seems to me, explain the exceeding of the appropriation, with every desire and effort on my part so to arrange the scale and conduct it as not to involve a deficiency. The field was almost totally new, rendering it impossible to form an estimate. Much work of reconnoissance had to be done, which had previously been done for all the other routes, before a direction could be given to the railroad examinations and estimates proper. Unforeseen expenses in the way of presents, etc., had to be incurred to conciliate the Indian tribes, for our route was the only one, so far as I was informed, that at the time was deemed particularly dangerous; and the investigation of the question of snow was a vital and fundamental one, essential to making any reliable report at all, and included within the express requirements of the original instructions. I deeply regretted the deficiency which I found impending at Fort Benton, and I took at that place that course which I believed Congress and the department would have taken under the circumstances.”

Moreover, to provide funds indispensable for the immediate needs of the survey, the governor had drawn on Corcoran and Riggs, government bankers in Washington, to the amount of $16,000, and these drafts all went to protest.

But the Secretary’s order arrived too late to frustrate Governor Stevens’s thoroughgoing measures for determining the snow question. The problem was solved before the work of the winter parties could be arrested, and this most important point was clearly and satisfactorily set forth in the report. The much-feared mountain snows were found to be greatly exaggerated, and to present no real obstacle to the operation of railroads. In this respect the report has been fully confirmed by subsequent experience, and in fact less difficulty has been encountered from snow in the mountains than on the plains of Dakota.

He decided, therefore, to hasten to Washington the earliest moment his threefold duties of the governorship, Indian service, and the exploration would admit of, filled with the fixed determination to prevent the discontinuance of the exploration, to secure the payment of the protested drafts, and to enlighten the government as to the necessity of the Blackfoot council, and of extinguishing the Indian title within his own Territory.

To justify his going without leave first obtained, the legislature passed a joint resolution that “no disadvantage would result to the Territory should the governor visit Washington, if, in his judgment, the interests of the Northern Pacific Railroad survey could thereby be promoted.”

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CHAPTER XXIII
RETURN TO WASHINGTON.—REPORT OF EXPLORATION

Governor Stevens left Olympia on March 26, and, proceeding by way of the Cowlitz to the Columbia, and by steamer down the coast, reached San Francisco early in April. Here he found a group of his old friends and brother officers, including Mason, Halleck, and Folsom, and how warmly he was received by them, and how interesting they found his accounts of the exploration, the Indians, and the many wild and new scenes he had passed through, may be imagined. His arrival attracted much public attention; his exploration was deemed a very important and remarkable one, and one conducted with remarkable ability and success; and in Music Hall, on Bush Street, April 13, before a crowded audience, and introduced by Mayor Garrison, he gave an able address upon the Northern route. In this address he boldly advocated three railroads across the continent, declaring that the subject of internal communications was too great to be treated from a sectional point of view. He demonstrated the favorable character of the route and country he had explored, the navigability of the upper Columbia and Missouri, and the little obstruction from snows. The impression made by this address is reflected in the editorial of the San Francisco “Herald:”—

“Of all the surveys ordered by the general government at Washington with a view to the selection of a route for a railroad across the continent, that intrusted to Governor Stevens is by far the most satisfactory. He took the field in June last, having left the Mississippi River on the 15th of that month, and, moving steadily westward,—throwing out parties on the right and left of his line, surveying every stream of any consequence, exploring every pass again and again,—he has accomplished in that time the survey of a belt extending two thousand miles from east to west, and from one hundred and fifty to two hundred miles from north to south. In the Rocky Mountains his explorations have extended over four hundred miles from north to south, and in the Cascade Mountains over two hundred and fifty miles. While the main work of reconnoissance was going on, the auxiliary departments of geology, natural history, botany, etc., were prosecuted with vigor and success. The results obtained in so short a space of time are, as far as we are aware, unparalleled.

“The route thus occupied by Governor Stevens and his party is the route of the two great rivers across the continent, the Missouri and Columbia. Their tributaries interlock; the whole mountain range is broken down into spurs and valleys, and no obstruction exists from snow. The whole route is eminently practicable. The highest grade will be fifty feet to the mile. The summit level of the road will be about five thousand feet above the sea. There will be but one tunnel. The snows will be less than in the New England States. The Missouri River has been surveyed, and found to be navigable for steamers to the Falls, about seven hundred miles from Puget Sound, and five hundred miles to the point where the main Columbia is first reached by railroad from the East. This five hundred miles is in part along Clark’s Fork, affording one hundred miles navigable for steamers.

“The results of the survey may be summed up as follows: Three lines run from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains; nine passes explored in the Rocky Mountains; three lines run from the Rocky Mountains to the Columbia River and Puget Sound; the Cascades explored from the Columbia to the 49th parallel; Puget Sound examined with reference to a railroad depot; the fact that not the slightest obstruction will occur from snow established beyond controversy.”

After a short stay in San Francisco, Governor Stevens took the steamer for the Isthmus, and reached New York in May, and the next morning had a joyful reunion with his wife and little girls in Newport. After his severe and long-continued labors, the sea voyage compelled him to a much-needed rest. On such voyages he threw off his wonted intense, high pressure mood of work, and, with mind relaxed, enjoyed the soothing influence of old Neptune.

He proceeded immediately to Washington with his family, except his son, who was at school at Phillips Academy in Andover, and who joined him later at the summer vacation, and took rooms at the National Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue. A great deal was still to be done to complete the report of the exploration, and with Tinkham, Osgood, and other assistants he drove it with his accustomed vigor. On June 30 he submitted it to the department, the first report of all the routes, although it covered the greatest field, and was by far the most comprehensive and exhaustive.

Secretary Davis, recognizing that in his measures for prosecuting the survey Governor Stevens was actuated solely by zeal for the public service, submitted an estimate to cover the deficiency, which was duly appropriated, and the protested drafts were honored. General Hunt gives the following incident, which shows the confidence Governor Stevens’s old friends had in his ability to carry his points:—

“I followed him in the thorough work he made of the Northern Pacific Railway survey,—of his row with Jeff Davis for overrunning in his expenditures the amount assigned him, and so preventing Jeff’s designs of defeating that road. In 1854 I had, at Fort Monroe, occasion to describe your father to old Major Holmes, a classmate of Jeff. He went to Washington, and on his return told me, ‘Your friend Stevens is ruined. Davis refuses to recommend to Congress to make good the expenditures as contrary to orders. It will ruin Stevens.’ ‘Wait awhile,’ said I; ‘I see by the last “Union” that Stevens has just arrived en route to Washington at Panama. He will leave Jeff nowhere!’ Soon after he arrived in Washington, was followed by an appropriation covering all his bills, and so Jeff failed all round.”

Secretary Davis was in fact astonished and deeply disappointed at the results of the survey, and the very favorable picture of the Northern route and country given in Governor Stevens’s report. A leader among the Southern public men, who were so soon to bring on the great rebellion, of which he was to be the official head, he had set his heart upon the Southern route, and was anxious to establish its superiority to all others and secure its adoption as the national route, in order to aggrandize his own section. He could ill brook, therefore, Governor Stevens’s clear and vivid description of the Northern route, showing its great superiority in soil and climate, the easy grades, absence of snow, and accessibility by inland river navigation. He chose to consider the accounts overdrawn as the best way of sustaining his chosen route. In his report to Congress, transmitting the surveys of the several routes, he took great pains to belittle the results of Governor Stevens’s labors and disparage the Northern route. In his comparison of routes, he arbitrarily increased the governor’s estimate of cost from $117,121,000 to $150,871,000, or nearly $38,000,000; magnified the physical difficulties; condemned the agricultural resources; declared that “the country west of the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific slope may likewise be described as one of general sterility,” and that “the severely cold character of the climate throughout the whole route, except the portion west of the Cascade Mountains, is one of its unfavorable features.” He ignored the governor’s statements, and Tinkham’s reconnoissance as to the snow in the Snoqualmie Pass, and the practicability of the latter, and, quoting McClellan with approval, declared that “the snow is twenty feet deep, the pass barely practicable, and the information now possessed is sufficient to decide against this route.” It is significant that he pays a warm compliment to McClellan, remarking that “his examination presents a reconnoissance of great value, and, though performed under adverse circumstances, exhibits all the information necessary to determine the practicability of this portion of the route.” And this of an officer who had consumed a whole month in moving one hundred and eighty miles; lay another month in camp in the Yakima valley, making only the most cursory examinations; found the passes non-existent, or “impracticable;” reported the snow twenty to twenty-five feet deep on the credit of Indians; ignobly quailed at inclement weather and snows, which other men bravely faced and overcame; and generally condemned the country, and vilified the hardy pioneers. In sober truth McClellan found credit in the eyes of the Secretary, not for what he accomplished, but for what he failed to accomplish, for his unfavorable and condemnatory report on the route and the country, which was precisely the kind of testimony the Secretary wanted. The country, stigmatized as one of “general sterility,” and which Governor Stevens pronounced a fine, arable region of great fertility, is now one of the great wheat-fields of the country, yielding twenty to thirty million bushels a year.

Moreover, Mr. Davis manifested a dissatisfied and fault-finding spirit towards the governor. On one occasion, when the latter was calling on him, and asking his attention to some matter of importance connected with the survey, Davis interrupted him with marked impatience, and intimated that he had no time to hear him. “I do not come here to talk with Jefferson Davis,” exclaimed the governor with dignity, “but to confer with the Secretary of War upon the public business intrusted to my charge, and I demand his attention.” The Secretary at once gave him full and considerate hearing until the matter was fully gone into, and as the governor took his leave, followed him to the door, and frankly apologized for his momentary rudeness. Jefferson Davis was not without generous and magnanimous traits, and appreciated the earnest and sincere character of his caller. But he put a stop to further work on the Northern route, prevented any more appropriations for it, and kept up his fight against it. Some time afterwards, in speaking of the route to a mutual friend,[8] he declared: “Governor Stevens is a man of great ability, and of upright and high-toned character, but he has entirely misconceived and exaggerated the agricultural resources of the Northern route. The fact is, he has no knowledge of agricultural soils or conditions.” When this was repeated to the governor he remarked: “Indeed, perhaps Mr. Davis does not know that I was brought up on a farm until my seventeenth year.”

But Governor Stevens indulged in no complaints at this unworthy treatment. He knew that the information given in his report was too well founded and abundant to be refuted by mere official rancor. Despite the deprivation of funds, he continued the work of exploration, survey, and observation for the next three years, making free use of the Indian agents and volunteer troops under his command, and unsparing in his own personal exertions, and on February 7, 1859, submitted to the War Department “My final report of the explorations made by me and under my direction in the years 1853, 1854, and 1855, to determine the practicability of the Northern route for a railroad to the Pacific.” This report, published by order of Congress in two large quarto volumes, as Parts I. and II., vol. xii., Pacific Railroad Reports, contains over eight hundred pages, with plates, tables, and views, and most fully sustains the earlier report, besides adding an immense amount of new information. And this was Governor Stevens’s answer to Secretary Davis.

But the governor found the sultry summer in Washington a very trying one, in cramped quarters, overburdened with the voluminous data and details of the report, and subject to many annoyances. Unfortunately, the meteorological and astronomical observations, while in care of Lieutenant Donelson, were lost, presumably on the Isthmus, by the carelessness of the express company, and could not be recovered, although that officer returned to San Francisco expressly in search of them, and this loss caused serious embarrassment. The governor found, too, that some of the scientific corps were proposing to publish as their own separate work the materials gathered as members of the exploration, and had to adopt decided and severe measures to prevent the barefaced attempt. During great part of July he was seriously ill, and incapacitated from work.

In addition to all these labors and cares, he obtained the sanction of the government for holding the Blackfoot council he had so much at heart, for which he was appointed a commissioner, and allotted $10,000 for assembling and bringing the western Indians to Fort Benton. His views and recommendations in regard to treating with the Indians of Washington Territory, and purchasing their lands, were also adopted, and he was appointed the commissioner to make such treaties. As already stated, his recommendations in regard to the claims of the Hudson Bay Company were adopted by the Secretary of State. Congress appropriated $30,000 for a wagon-road from Fort Benton to Walla Walla, a matter which the governor strenuously urged; and also amended the land laws, created the office of surveyor-general, and made appropriations for universal surveys and mail service. To all these matters “Governor Stevens addressed himself with the energy, ability, and straightforwardness which were his characteristics, supplementing the feebler efforts of Lancaster, and, with Lane of Oregon, coming to the rescue of the most important bills for Washington, and really doing the work of the delegate.”[9] Notwithstanding Secretary Davis’s attitude on the Northern route, Governor Stevens seems to have lost none of his influence with the administration. When about to return to the Pacific coast, President Pierce invited him to write him personally and frequently.

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CHAPTER XXIV
CROSSING THE ISTHMUS

Governor Stevens, with his family, consisting of his wife, four children, the two youngest being only two and four years old respectively, and the nurse Ellen, a bonny young Irish woman, sailed from New York, September 20, 1854, en route for his far Western home. The vessel was packed full, with thirteen hundred passengers. The food was execrable, meats and poultry tainted and almost uneatable. Ice was charged extra, twenty-five cents a pound. The second cabin table rivaled at times a scene from Bedlam. The hungry passengers would often hurl the spoiled chickens overboard amid loud complaints, laughter, and the imitated crowing and cackle of cocks and hens. Christy’s minstrels were on board, bound to San Francisco,—a reckless, noisy, drinking crew, but fine performers, both instrumental and vocal, and always ready and willing to entertain the passengers with their pleasing melodies. The best state-rooms were allotted the governor and family, with seats next the captain at table, but the younger children had to sit at the second table. The ship put in at Havana for a day, where the family enjoyed a delicious repast of broiled birds on toast and guava jelly at the Dominica restaurant, and viewed the cathedral and tomb of Columbus. Crossing the Caribbean sea in hot and sultry weather, they arrived at Aspinwall on the 29th.

This place was squalid, dreary, and repulsive. Low, flat, swampy morass, some filled-in land; great pools of dirty, green, stagnant water; a frail, rickety wharf, which the ship hardly dared touch lest it fall over; a railroad track along the shore; a hundred yards back, a number of large, cheap-built wooden houses, like overgrown tenement houses, unpainted and dilapidated; the street a bed of mud, littered with broken boards and refuse lumber and piles of rubbish; black pigs roaming and rooting about; many rascally and worthless-looking natives, in whom the negro predominated,—the whole thoroughly wet down by heavy, drenching, tropical showers,—such was Aspinwall, as the disappointed passengers landed, and sought the shelter of the buildings supposed to be hotels, but where almost everything was lacking except extortionate charges.

After a comfortless night and miserable breakfast, the party embarked on the cars, and proceeded about twenty miles to the “Summit,” which was half way to Panama, and as far as the road then extended, and which was reached about noon, and learned that the rest of the way across had to be made on horse or mule back. There were no animals ready, but it was announced that the party would have to wait until the next morning, when plenty of mules would be provided. Some railroad sheds, a few native huts, and a huge pavilion, consisting of an immense pyramidal thatched roof surmounting low sides mostly open, comprised the only shelters, and into them the passengers flocked.

The great pavilion belonged to a huge, jet black Jamaica negro, named Carusi, and was not partitioned off, consisting of nothing indeed but the earthen floor and the roof above it, with the low sides. At night this rude structure was thronged with the weary passengers. Delicate ladies and children, rough men, and people of every kind and condition fairly covered the floor, or rather ground, seeking rest as best they could; while in the centre of the apartment, in a big, old-fashioned, four-poster bed, lay the gigantic Carusi side by side with his fat wife, their ebony faces contrasting with the white pillows and sheets. The minstrels improved the occasion with banjo and song until late at night, when some of them, becoming drunk, began disturbing the company with oaths and obscene language, but Governor Stevens rebuked them in such stern and minatory manner that they were cowed, and relapsed into silence.

The expected mules began arriving in small bands under charge of natives about noon the next day, and with much bargaining and contention the passengers secured their mounts, and started off in groups. The governor employed two natives to carry the two youngest children, who were mere babies, on their backs in chairs, and set off followed by the rest of the family mounted each on a mule. It soon began to rain in torrents. In an hour it as suddenly ceased, and the sun came out, hot and sultry, soon to be followed by another downpour, and so deluge and sunshine alternated all day. After riding two hours over narrow, muddy trails, and up and down steep though short hills, where the mules had trodden the clay into regular steps, they reached the Chagres River, and found all the passengers who had preceded them collected on the bank, gazing in dismay on the raging yellow flood, for the stream was up under the tremendous rains, and fearing to essay its passage. After viewing the river carefully, the governor forced his mule into it, and, guiding him diagonally across, safely made the opposite bank. Then, returning, he led the way across again, his little daughter Sue, only eight years old, close behind on her mule, then the rest of the family, and after them followed all the waiting crowd. It was dark when they reached Panama, and found shelter in an old cloistered stone convent, now used as a hotel, exchanged their wet clothes for dry purchased at the nearest shop, and obtained much-needed food and rest. But nothing was seen or heard of the natives with the two babies, since they stole off on a footpath soon after starting, and late in the evening the governor mounted a fresh animal, and with a guide went back to find them, spending the greater part of the night in a vain search. At breakfast the next morning the natives brought in the children, safe and well and perfectly contented. They had taken the little ones to their huts on account of the heavy rains, where the native women fed them and put them to bed, dried their clothes, and sent them in the next morning, safe and sound.

During the day the passengers were taken out in boats to the steamer Golden Age, which was anchored in the bay three miles from the town. She was a larger and more commodious ship than the other. The voyage up the coast began the next morning. A stop of several hours was made in the land-locked harbor of Acapulco, which the governor improved by taking his family ashore, and treating them to a dinner of fried chicken at a small posada on the old and quaint paved main street. The Panama fever soon made its dreaded appearance among the passengers, owing to their exposure on the Isthmus; many fell sick, and a considerable number died and were buried at sea. The weather was fine, the sea calm and smooth save for the long rollers of the Pacific, and the voyage would have been an enjoyable one had it not been for the fearful fever and the crowded condition of the vessel. On the fourteenth day she entered the Golden Gate, and rested in the welcome port of San Francisco.

The governor took rooms at the Oriental Hotel. His wife and the three little girls were all seized with the fever on the ship, and their condition was serious when they landed. Doctors Hitchcock and Hammond, old army friends of the governor, were unremitting in their attentions, and after several weeks’ care brought the sufferers past the danger point, all except the little four-year-old Maude. Her case they at length pronounced hopeless. But her father would not give her up. He had a hot bath administered as a last resort, and sat by her bedside hour after hour, giving liquid nourishment drop by drop, and at last she passed the crisis and began to recover. By all this sickness they were forced to remain in the city over a month; but in the society of his old friends, and amid the bright, vigorous men and bustling scenes of the new-born metropolis, the time passed rapidly and well improved. Folsom, a man of wealth, placed his fine carriage and horses at Mrs. Stevens’s disposal. Halleck would have long talks with the governor. Dr. Gwin and his family, old friends and neighbors, met them with real Southern cordiality.

One incident is worth relating, because it materially affected subsequent events, as the governor believed. A number of officers and other gentlemen were conversing together at the hotel one evening, among whom was General John E. Wool, then commanding the United States forces on the Pacific coast. The talk turned on the battle of Buena Vista, and General Wool loudly claimed for himself all the credit for that battle, disparaging in an offensive manner General Taylor and the part he took in it. At length Governor Stevens, whose strong sense of justice was outraged by the boastful and unfair tirade, spoke up and said: “General Wool, we all know the brilliant part you bore in the battle, but we all know and history will record that General Taylor fought and won the battle of Buena Vista.”[10] Wool, although visibly offended, made no reply to this rebuke, but it rankled and caused a bitter animosity, which subsequently found vent in hostile speech and action.

The voyage up the coast was made without special incident; they crossed the bar, steamed up the Columbia, and landed at Vancouver early in November. Here they remained a fortnight, the guests of Captain Brent, the quartermaster, in order to enable the sick members to gain strength sufficiently to stand the hard trip to the Sound. After this brief stay the governor took his family on a little steamboat to Portland, where they spent the night. The town then consisted only of a string of small wooden buildings along the river-bank. The street, or road, was a perfect quagmire of mud-holes. Single planks laid along irregularly, with many intervals, furnished the only sidewalks. The next morning they embarked on a steamer and went down the river to Rainier, where they landed. This place consisted of a wharf and a sawmill. It was called Rainier, it was said, by way of a joke, because it rained here all the time; but doubtless it was named after Mount Rainier, which was named by Admiral Vancouver after a lord of the British admiralty. The party took canoes, manned by Indians, the same afternoon, crossed the Columbia, and paddled a few miles up the Cowlitz to Monticello, where they spent the night. At daylight the next morning the governor and family embarked in one large canoe, while the trunks and baggage followed in another, and pushed upstream against a swift current. There were in the canoe the governor, his wife and four children, the nurse, and a crew of four Indians, two at each end. It was a dark, drizzling day, with frequent showers. The passengers sat upon the bottom of the canoe upon plenty of Indian mats, and well wrapped in blankets, and, except for the constrained and irksome position, were fairly comfortable. The Indians, urged by promise of extra pay, paddled vigorously. At the rapids (and it seemed that nearly all the stream was in rapids) they laid aside their paddles, and, standing up, forced the canoe ahead with poles, which they wielded with great skill and vigor. All day long they paddled and poled with unabated energy, now paddling where they could take advantage of an eddy or stretch of back water, now forcing the canoe up swift rapids, gaining inch by inch. It was after dark when they reached Cowlitz Landing, thirty miles above Monticello, and found shelter for the night at the hospitable inn kept by Dr. and Mrs. U.G. Warbass.

Writes Mrs. Stevens of this trip:—

“We were placed in the canoe with great care, so as to balance it evenly, as it was frail and upset easily. At first the novelty, motion, and watching our Indians paddle so deftly, then seize their poles and push along over shallow places, keeping up a low, sweet singing as they glided along, was amusing. As we were sitting flat on the bottom of the canoe, the position became irksome and painful. We were all day long on this Cowlitz River. At night I could not stand on my feet for some time after landing. We walked ankle-deep in the mud to a small log-house, where we had a good meal. Here we found a number of rough, dirty-looking men, with pantaloons tucked inside their boots, and so much hair upon their heads and faces they all looked alike. After tea we were shown a room to sleep in, full of beds, which were for the women. I was so worn out with this novel way of traveling that I laid down on a narrow strip of bed, not undressed, all my family alongside on the same bed. The governor sat on a stool near by, and, strange to say, slept sound through the long, dismal night. He had been shown his bed up through a hole on top of the shanty. He said one look was sufficient. Men were strewn as thick as possible on the floor in their blankets. The steam generated from their wet clothes, boots, and blankets was stifling. One small hole cut through the roof was the only ventilation.

“As soon as breakfast was over the next morning, we mounted into a wagon without springs and proceeded on our journey. The governor took M. in his arms to keep her from being jolted. There surely were no worse roads to be found anywhere in the world than this. The horses went deep in the mud every step; the wheels sank to the hub, and often had to be pried up. We forded rivers, the water coming above our ankles in the wagon. Many big, deep holes they would jump over, making the horses run quick, when the wagon would jump across, shaking us up fearfully. In one of these holes our horses fell down, and we stuck fast in the mud. We were taken from the wagon by men of our party plunging up to their knees in the mud, and carrying us out by sheer force of their strength. After seating us upon a fallen log, the horses were with difficulty extricated from the mud. After another long day’s tiresome travel we stopped at a log-house for the night. Upon entering from the porch we found a big room, with a wood fire filling up one side, blazing and crackling, low chairs in front; in the centre of the room was a table with a clean cloth on it, and a repast of well-cooked food, relishing and abundant, was placed upon it, to which we did ample justice. Our host was an Englishman, a farmer, who was getting on well, a genial, hospitable man. His wife was a superior woman. She had crossed the plains with her first husband. On the journey they were surrounded by Indians. He was killed. She was taken prisoner by these savages, and after passing through untold suffering she managed to make her escape, and after walking hundreds of miles, living upon berries by the way, she came into the Dalles, a forlorn, starved woman, almost destitute of clothing, with her boy ten years of age. It was here our host met her and offered shelter to her child and herself, which she gladly accepted, and finally became his wife. She was a fine-looking woman and a thorough housekeeper, but had the saddest expression on her face. At night she took us across the yard into another log-house, where we found a bright fire burning on the hearth, and nice, clean beds. I felt like staying in this comfortable shelter, hearing the rain patter on the roof, until the rainy season was over, at least.”

The host referred to was John R. Jackson. His farm was only ten miles from Cowlitz Landing, but the roads were in such wretched state that a whole day was consumed in traveling this short distance.

After a cheerful breakfast the next morning, the journey was resumed. George W. Stevens and several other gentlemen came out to meet the governor and family, and escorted them to Olympia. The governor mounted his horse Charlie, which he purchased of the Red River half-breeds, and which was brought out to him. This was a great, powerful gray charger, of high spirit, and able to cover twelve miles an hour in a swinging trot without distress. It was another rainy, drizzling day. The road was almost impassable. At Saunders’s Bottom, where the town of Chehalis now stands, the mud was knee-deep for two miles, terribly wearing on the animals. At length, after fording the Skookumchuck at its mouth, and traversing an extensive prairie, the wet, tired, and bedraggled party reached the log-house of Judge Sidney S. Ford, and found hospitable shelter for the night, having traveled about twenty-five miles that day.

The next day the party reached Olympia late in the afternoon, after a thirty miles’ journey over much better and pleasanter roads, traversing prairies over half the distance, including Grand Mound, Little Mound, and Bush’s prairies. It was a dreary, dark, December day. It had rained considerably. The road from Tumwater to Olympia was ankle-deep in mud, and thridded a dense forest with a narrow track. With expectations raised at the idea of seeing the capital and chief town of the Territory, the weary travelers toiled up a small hill in the edge of the timber, reached the summit, and eagerly looked to see the future metropolis. Their hearts sank with bitter disappointment as they surveyed the dismal and forlorn scene before them. A low, flat neck of land, running into the bay, down it stretched the narrow, muddy track, winding among the stumps which stood thickly on either side; twenty small wooden houses bordered the road, while back of them on the left and next the shore were a number of Indian lodges, with canoes drawn up on the beach, and Indians and dogs lounging about. The little hill mentioned is where now stands the Masonic Building, opposite the Olympia Hotel. The site of the Indian camp is now Columbia Street, between Third and Fourth. There were only one or two buildings above, or south of, Sixth Street. The public square was a tangle of fallen timber. Main Street terminated in Giddings’s Wharf, which was left high and dry at low tide.

Mrs. Stevens continues her account as follows:—

“At night we were told, on ascending a hill, ‘There is Olympia.’ Below us, in the deep mud, were a few low, wooden houses, at the head of Puget Sound. My heart sank, for the first time in my life, at the prospect. After ploughing through the mud, we stopped at the principal hotel, to stay until our house was ready for us. As we went upstairs there were a number of people standing about to see the governor and his family. I was very much annoyed at their staring and their remarks, which they made audibly, and hastened to get in some private room, where I could make myself better prepared for an inspection. Being out in rains for many days had not improved our appearance or clothes. But there seemed no rest for the weary. Upon being ushered into the public parlor I found people from far and near had been invited to inspect us. The room was full. The sick child was cross, and took no notice of anything that was said to her. One of the women saying aloud, ‘What a cross brat that is!’ I could stand it no longer, but opened a door and went into a large dancing-hall, and soon after, when the governor came to look me up, I was breaking my heart over the forlorn situation I found myself in,—cold, wet, uncomfortable, no fire, shaking with chills. What a prospect! How I longed to find myself back in my childhood’s home, among good friends and relatives! Just then we were told we were expected across the street. The governor had his office there, and had us taken directly there. It was a happy change. We went into a large, cheerful room, with the beds on the floor, a bright fire burning, book-cases filled with books smiling upon us. We soon had a good repast, and felt comfortable at last. In a few days we were at housekeeping, very pleasant indeed, all picking up in health, and good friends around us.

“Many of the people called on me. I found them pleasant and agreeable people; many of them were well-educated and interesting young ladies who had come here with their husbands, government officials, and who had given up their city homes to live in this unknown land, surrounded by Indians and dense forests.

“I remained three years at Olympia, a great part of the time living alone with the children, the governor being away in all parts of the Territory, making treaties with the Indians, planning and arranging the settlement of the country. There was a pleasant company of officers, with their wives, stationed at Steilacoom, twenty miles from Olympia, with whom I became acquainted, and had visits from and visited. Naval ships came up Puget Sound with agreeable officers on board. I had a horse to ride on horseback across the lovely prairies. Almost daily I took a ride about the picturesque, beautiful country, with the rich, dense forests and snowy mountains, green little prairies skirted by timber, lakes of deep, clear water, all of which was new to me, affording great pleasure in exploring Indian trails and country, which was completely new. I also had a boat built, in which I made excursions down the Sound. About two miles down there was a Catholic mission, a large, dark house or monastery, surrounded by cultivated land, a fine garden in front filled with flowers, bordered on one side, next the water, with immense bushes of wall-flowers in bloom; the fragrance, resembling the sweet English violet, filling the air with its delicious odor. Father Ricard, the venerable head of this house, was from Paris. He had lived in this place more than twenty years. He had with him Father Blanchet, a short, thickset man, who managed everything pertaining to the temporal comfort of the mission. Under him were servants who were employed in various ways, baking, cooking, digging, and planting. Their fruit was excellent and a great rarity, as there was but one more orchard in the whole country. There was a large number of Flatheads settled about them, who had been taught to count their beads, say prayers, and were good Catholics in all outward observances; chanted the morning and evening prayers, which they sang in their own language in a low, sweet strain, which, the first time I heard it, sitting in my boat at sunset, was impressive and solemn. We went often to visit Father Ricard, who was a highly educated man, who seemed to enjoy having some one to converse with in his own language. He said the Canadians used such bad French.”

Mrs. Stevens was still suffering from the Panama fever, and it was a year before she and little Maude recovered from it. The new quarters consisted of two long, one-story wooden buildings, one room wide, little more than sheds, hired of Father Ricard at $900 a year. They were cheaply built, without plastering, but lined inside with cotton cloth. There was a narrow passageway between them, from which doors gave access to the different rooms. In rear was a large yard, extending to the beach, upon which a gate in the rear fence opened, and where a boat was kept. The Indian camp began at the corner of the yard. The governor had secured two men servants, Agnew as cook, and W.F. Seely, man of all work. The latter was a lusty young Irishman, strong as a bull and quick as a cat, witty, boastful, brave, and devoted to the governor and his family. He was a member of the exploring party, where he had fought and beaten all the pugilistic heroes up to the wagon-master, C.P. Higgins, by whom he had been handsomely vanquished, and whom he regarded ever after with great admiration and esteem.

The family soon felt at home in the new abode, amid the novel scenes and experiences, and cheered by new and old friends. George Stevens, Mason, and Lieutenant Arnold came in and out like brothers. There were Evans and Kendall, who came with the exploration; Major H. A. Goldsborough, George Gibbs, Colonel Simmons, Frank Shaw, and Orrington Cushman, known as “Old Cush,” with his great red beard, a great favorite with children, and liked and trusted by both whites and Indians. Major James Tilton, the surveyor-general, arrived with his family after a voyage around the Horn,—a man of soldierly bearing and aristocratic tastes, who was to render valuable service. Captain J. Cain also arrived, as Indian agent,—a typical Indiana politician, but a man of parts and integrity and public spirit, and a true friend.

The second legislature met on December 4, and the governor on the 5th delivered his message in person.

After acknowledging the consideration shown him as their executive, and congratulating them on the flattering prospects of the Territory, he recommended them to memorialize Congress for roads, mail service, steamer lines, etc., and other needs, and mentioned with regret the failure of Congress to provide for objects for which he had earnestly striven, viz., the extinction of the Hudson Bay Company’s claims, the running of the northern boundary line, and a geological survey of the coal measures. He urged the organization of an effective militia, referring to the danger of Indian hostilities, his recommendation to the first legislature, and to the fact that the government had refused his recent applications for arms because the militia was not organized. He summed up the results of his exploration in saying: “Beautiful prairies and delightful valleys, easy passes practicable at all seasons of the year, have taken the place of savage deserts and mountain defiles impracticable half the year from snow.... The more the country is examined, the better it develops.”

In closing he invoked their support of his efforts in behalf of the Indians:—

“I will indulge the hope that the same spirit of concord and exalted patriotism, which has thus far marked our political existence, will continue to the end. Particularly do I invoke that spirit in reference to our Indian relations. I believe the time has now come for their final settlement. In view of the important duties which have been assigned to me, I throw myself unreservedly upon the people of the Territory, not doubting that they will extend to me a hearty and generous support in my efforts to arrange on a permanent basis the future of the Indians of this Territory.”

Referring to the military road across the Nahchess Pass, he said:—

“It would be a great benefit to those traveling this road should the legislature take some step toward sowing with grass-seed the small prairie known as the Bare Prairie, situated a little below the mouth of Green River, as also the sides of the mountain known as La Tête. These points are intermediate in a long distance destitute of grass, and are almost necessarily stopping-places on the march. A very small sum would cover the expense of planting them, and the advantage would be incalculable.”

This humane and sensible suggestion was turned into ridicule and defeated by one of those wiseacres, strong in their own conceit and ignorance, that infest most assemblies, who cried out, “Governor Stevens needn’t try to make grass grow where God Almighty didn’t make it grow.”

There was great jealousy on the part of the settlers of the far-reaching claims of the Hudson Bay Company, and under the influence of this feeling the council requested the governor to communicate any information he had as to the manner in which Congress arrived at the estimated amount of $300,000 as the value of such claims. The attentions paid him by the officers of that company, in their open efforts to gain his goodwill and support, were well known, and, with the fact that an appropriation of the above amount for extinguishing the claims had passed the Senate, had excited some mistrust as to the governor’s action and attitude on that important question. In reply he simply gave a synopsis of his report to the State Department, which set all doubts at rest.

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CHAPTER XXV
INDIAN POLICY.—TREATIES ON PUGET SOUND

Governor Stevens regarded his Indian treaties and Indian policy, and his management of the Indians of the Northwest, as among the most important, beneficial, and successful services he rendered the country. By ten treaties and many councils and talks, he extinguished the Indian title to a domain larger than New England; and by the Blackfoot council and treaty he made peace between those fierce savages and the whites and all the surrounding tribes, and permanently pacified a region equally extensive, embracing the greater part of Montana and northern Idaho; and during the four years, 1853–56, he treated and dealt with over thirty thousand Indians, divided into very numerous and independent tribes and bands, and occupying the whole vast region from the Pacific to and including the plains of the upper Missouri, and now comprising the States of Washington, part of Oregon, northern Idaho, and the greater part of Montana. Moreover, by gaining the wavering friendship and fidelity of doubtful tribes, and even many members of the disaffected, he frustrated the well-planned efforts of the hostile Indians to bring about a universal outbreak, and saved the infant settlements from complete annihilation at the hands of the treacherous savages.

His Indian policy was one of great beneficence to the Indians, jealously protected their interests, and provided for their improvement and eventual civilization, while at the same time it opened the country for settlement by the whites. The wisdom with which it was planned, and the ability and energy with which it was carried out, during this brief period, are attested by the remarkable success which attended it, and by the fact that many of these tribes are to-day living under those very treaties, and have made substantial progress towards civilized habits. It is believed that in their extent and magnitude, in their difficulties and dangers, and in the permanence and beneficence of their results, these operations are without parallel in the history of the country. Yet for several years Governor Stevens’s Indian treaties were bitterly assailed and misrepresented both by hostile Indians and by officers high in authority; their confirmation was refused by the United States Senate, and he himself was made the target for virulent abuse. It was his intention to write the history of these operations, an intention which the pressure of public duties during the few remaining years of his life, and his early death, prevented. In his final report on the Northern route he remarks, in words of manly fortitude and confidence:—

“I trust the time will come when my treaty operations of 1855,—the most extensive operations ever undertaken and carried out in these latter days of our history,—I repeat, I trust the time will come when I shall be able to vindicate them, and show that they were wise and proper, and that they accomplished a great end. They have been very much criticised and very much abused; but I have always felt that history will do those operations justice. I have not been impatient as to time, but have been willing that my vindication should come at the end of a term of years. Let short-minded men denounce and criticise ignorantly and injuriously, and let time show that the government made no mistake in the man whom it placed in the great field of duty as its commissioner to make treaties with the Indian tribes.”

And in another place he adds:—

“I intend at some future day to give a very full account of these large operations in the Indian service.”

In his journey across the plains, amid all the cares and labors of the great exploration, Governor Stevens took the utmost pains, by messages, talks, and councils to and with the Blackfeet and other tribes, to prepare them for the great council and peace treaty which he saw was necessary for the opening and settlement of the country, and on arriving in his own Territory was equally indefatigable in impressing upon the Indians there the advantages of living at peace with the white man, of adopting his better mode of livelihood, and of securing the aid and protection of the Great Father in Washington. Among his first acts was the appointment of Indian agents, and sending them to urge these views upon the tribes. It was high time for judicious and prompt action; for the Indians, especially the powerful and warlike tribes of the upper Columbia, were becoming alarmed at the way the whites were pouring into the country, and, under the invitation of Congress given by the Donation Acts, were taking up their choicest lands without asking their consent. On his recent visit in Washington he had impressed his views upon the government, obtained its sanction and authorization for the Blackfoot council, and the necessary authority and funds for treating with the Indians of his own superintendency. He now planned treating first with the tribes on Puget Sound and west of the Cascades for the cession of their lands, then with the great tribes occupying the country between the Cascades and Rocky Mountains for their lands, and then, crossing the Rockies, to proceed to Fort Benton, accompanied by delegations from the hunting tribes of Washington and Oregon, and there hold the great pre-arranged peace council with the Blackfeet, Crows, and Assiniboines of the plains east of the mountains, and the Nez Perces, Flatheads, Pend Oreilles, etc., of the western slope.

Immediately on his return to Olympia the governor sent out the agents and messengers to assemble the Sound Indians at designated points for council and treaty making, and early in January dispatched Mr. Doty with a small party east of the Cascades to make the preliminary arrangements for bringing together in council the Indians of that region.

The Indians on the Sound, including those on the Strait of Fuca, numbered some eight thousand five hundred, and were divided into a great many tribes and bands. They were canoe Indians, and drew most of their food from the waters, chiefly salmon and shell-fish, eked out with game, roots, and berries. Those about the upper Sound had bands of ponies, with which they roamed the prairies in summer. They lived in large lodges, several families together, constructed of planks split from the cedar, with nearly flat roofs, and often thirty or forty feet long and twenty wide. They showed no little artistic skill in their canoes, paddles, spears, fish-hooks, basket-work impervious to water, and mats of rushes. Out of a single cedar-tree, with infinite pains and labor, they hewed and burned the most graceful and beautiful and finest canoe ever seen, the very model, in lines and run, of a clipper ship. These varied in size from the little fishing-craft, holding but two persons, to a great canoe carrying thirty. They held as slaves the captives taken in war and their descendants, and, singularly enough, the heads of the slaves were left in their natural state, while the skulls of the free-born were flattened by pressure during infancy into the shape of a shovel. Many of the bands were remnants of former large tribes, for they had been greatly diminished in numbers by the ravages of smallpox and venereal disease. They lacked the energy and courage of the Indians of the upper country, and lived in perpetual dread of the gigantic and savage northern Indians,—the Hydahs and other bands of Tlinkits of British Columbia and Alaska,—who would periodically swoop down the coast in their great war canoes and raid these feebler folk, ruthlessly slaughtering the men, and enslaving the women and children. They suffered also, but to a less degree, from incursions of bands of Yakimas across the mountains, equally on trade and plunder bent, whom they designated “Klikitats,” or robbers, a term which has been taken as a tribal name. To these dangers were now added the fear of the all-powerful and ever-increasing whites. Thus situated and thus apprehensive, the messages and exhortations of the governor promising them protection, pointing out the way of bettering their condition, and of even imitating the envied superior race, broke upon them like a lighthouse in a dark night upon the storm-tossed mariner, relieved their fears and anxieties, and gave them hope. They hastened to assemble at the appointed council grounds, eager to listen to the new white chief, and to learn what he offered from the Great Father for their benefit.

On December 7, only two days after delivering his message to the legislature, Governor Stevens organized his treaty-making force by appointing James Doty secretary, George Gibbs surveyor, H.A. Goldsborough commissary, and B.F. Shaw interpreter, Colonel M.T. Simmons having already been appointed agent. The governor assembled these gentlemen to confer upon the projected treaties. After giving his views, and showing the necessity of speedily treating with the Indians and placing them on reservations, he had Mr. Doty read certain treaties with the Missouri and Omaha tribes, which contained provisions he deemed worthy of adoption, and invited a general and thorough discussion of the whole subject. So many points were settled by this frank and free interchange of views that Mr. Gibbs was directed to draw up a programme, or outline of a treaty, which on the next meeting on the 10th, after discussion and some changes, was adopted as the basis of the treaties to be made with the tribes on the Sound, coast, and lower Columbia.

No better advisers could have been found than the men with whom he thus took counsel; and one is struck by the clever and considerate way in which he secured the best fruits of their knowledge and experience, and enlisted their best efforts in carrying out the work. Simmons and Shaw were old frontiersmen, among the earliest settlers, and had dealt much with, and thoroughly understood, the Indians, and were respected and trusted by them. Simmons has been justly termed the Daniel Boone of Washington Territory. Shaw was said to be the only man who could make or translate a speech in Chinook jargon offhand, as fast as a man could talk in his own vernacular. The Chinook jargon was a mongrel lingo, made up for trading purposes by the fur-traders from English, French, and Indian words, and had become the common speech between whites and Indians, and between Indians of different tribes and tongues. He greatly distinguished himself afterwards in the Indian war as lieutenant-colonel of volunteers. Gibbs and Goldsborough were men of education, and had lived in the country long enough to know the general situation and conditions, and to learn much about the Indians. Gibbs, indeed, made a study of the different tribes, and rendered an able report upon them as part of the Northern Pacific Railroad exploration. Doty, a son of ex-Governor Doty, of Wisconsin, was a young man of uncommon ability and energy, who had spent the preceding winter at Fort Benton, and had studied and made a census of the Blackfeet.

The salient features of the policy outlined were as follows:—

1. To concentrate the Indians upon a few reservations, and encourage them to cultivate the soil and adopt settled and civilized habits.

2. To pay for their lands not in money, but in annuities of blankets, clothing, and useful articles during a long term of years.

3. To furnish them with schools, teachers, farmers and farming implements, blacksmiths, and carpenters, with shops of those trades.

4. To prohibit wars and disputes among them.

5. To abolish slavery.

6. To stop as far as possible the use of liquor.

7. As the change from savage to civilized habits must necessarily be gradual, they were to retain the right of fishing at their accustomed fishing-places, and of hunting, gathering berries and roots, and pasturing stock on unoccupied land as long as it remained vacant.

8. At some future time, when they should have become fitted for it, the lands of the reservations were to be allotted to them in severalty.

“It was proposed,” reported the governor, “to remove all the Indians on the east side of the Sound as far as the Snohomish, as also the S’Klallams, to Hood’s Canal, and generally to admit as few reservations as possible, with a view of finally concentrating them in one.” It was found necessary, however, in consequence of the mutual jealousies of so many independent tribes, to allow more reservations than he first intended, but some of them were established temporarily, with the right reserved in the President to remove the Indians to the larger reservations in the future.

The schooner R.B. Potter, Captain E.S. Fowler, was chartered at $700 per month, manned and victualed by the owner, to transport the personnel and treaty goods from point to point on the Sound. Orrington Cushman, Sidney S. Ford, Jr., and Henry D. Cock, with several assistants, were employed as quartermasters, to prepare camps and council grounds, make surveys, etc.

In all his councils Governor Stevens took the greatest pains to make the Indians understand what was said to them. To insure this he always had several interpreters, to check each other and prevent mistakes in translation, and was accustomed to consult the chiefs as to whom they wanted as interpreters.

“It was my invariable custom,” he states in the introduction to his final railroad report, page 18, “whenever I assembled a tribe in council, to procure from them their own rude sketches of the country, and a map was invariably prepared on a large scale and shown to them, exhibiting not only the region occupied by them, but the reservations that were proposed to be secured to them. At the Blackfoot council, the map there exhibited of the Blackfoot country—of the hunting-ground common to the Blackfeet and the Assiniboines, of the hunting-ground common to the Blackfeet and the tribes of Washington Territory, and of the passes of the Rocky Mountains by which this hunting-ground was reached—was the effective agent in guaranteeing to the Indians the exact facts as to what the treaty did propose, and to give them absolute and entire confidence in the government.”

He always urged and encouraged the Indians to make known their own views, wishes, and objections, and gave them time to talk matters over among themselves and make up their minds. Between the sessions of the council he would have the agents and interpreters explain the terms and point out the benefits of the proposed treaty, and would frequently summon the chiefs to his tent, and personally explain matters to them, and draw out their ideas. He also frequently invited public officers, and citizens of standing, to attend the councils, and would make use of them also to talk with and satisfy the Indians. All the proceedings of these councils, the deliberations and speeches as well as the treaties, were every word carefully taken down in writing, and transmitted to the Indian Bureau in Washington, where they are now on file. No one can read these records without being impressed with Governor Stevens’s great benevolence towards the Indians, and the absolute fairness, candor, and patience, as well as the judgment and tact, he manifested in dealing with them. One is also likely to be enlightened as to the native intelligence, ability, and shrewdness of the Indians themselves.

The first council was held on She-nah-nam, or Medicine Creek, now known as McAlister’s Creek, a mile above its mouth on the right bank, just below the house of Hartman, on a rising and wooded spot a few acres in extent, like an island with the creek on the one side (south) and the tide-marsh on the other. This stream flows along the south side of the Nisqually bottom, parallel to and half a mile from the river. The governor and his party, including Mason, Lieutenant W.A. Slaughter, of the 4th infantry, Doty, Gibbs, Edward Giddings, and the governor’s son, Hazard, a boy of twelve, went down to the treaty ground by canoes on December 24, and found a large space cleared of underbrush, the tents pitched, and everything made ready for the council by Simmons, Shaw, Cock, Cushman, and others, who had been sent ahead for that purpose. Seven hundred Indians of the tribes dwelling upon the upper Sound and as far down as the Puyallup River, including the Nisqually, Puyallup, and Squaxon tribes, were encamped near by. It rained nearly all day. In the afternoon the Indians drove a large band of ponies across the creek, forcing them to swim. Provisions were issued to the chiefs to distribute among their people.

On the following day the Indians assembled, taking seats on the ground in front of the council tent in semi-circular rows, and the objects and points of the proposed treaty were fully explained to them. The governor would utter a sentence in simple and clear language, and Colonel Shaw would interpret it in the Chinook jargon, which nearly all the Indians understood. The governor was extremely careful to make the Indians comprehend every sentence. Colonel Simmons, Gibbs, Cushman, and the citizens present, all knew the Chinook, and attentively followed Shaw as he interpreted, so that no mistake or omission could occur. It was slow and fatiguing work, this going over the ground sentence by sentence, and after several hours the Indians were dismissed for the day, told to think over what they had heard, and to assemble again the next morning. The governor wished to give them time to fully understand and reflect upon the proposed treaty, and encouraged them to talk freely to himself or any of his assistants in regard to it.

On the 26th the Indians assembled about nine o’clock to the number of 650, and Governor Stevens addressed them as follows:—

“This is a great day for you and for us, a day of peace and friendship between you and the whites for all time to come. You are about to be paid for your lands, and the Great Father has sent me to-day to treat with you concerning the payment. The Great Father lives far off. He has many children. Some of those children came here when he knew but little of them, or of the Indians, and he sent me to inquire about these things. We went through this country this last year, learned your numbers and saw your wants. We felt much for you, and went to the Great Father to tell him what we had seen. The Great Father felt for his children. He pitied them, and he has sent me here to-day to express these feelings, and to make a treaty for your benefit. The Great Father has many white children who come here, some to build mills, some to make farms, and some to fish; and the Great Father wishes you to learn to farm, and your children to go to a good school; and he now wants me to make a bargain with you, in which you will sell your lands, and in return be provided with all these things. You will have certain lands set apart for your homes, and receive yearly payments of blankets, axes, etc. All this is written down in this paper, which will be read to you. If it is good you will sign it, and I will then send it to the Great Father. I think he will be pleased with it and say it is good, but if not, if he wishes it different, he will say so and send it back; and then, if you agree to it, it is a fixed bargain, and payments will be made.”

The treaty was then read section by section and explained to the Indians, and every opportunity given them to discuss it.

Governor Stevens then said:—

“The paper has been read to you. Is it good? If it is good, we will sign it; but if you dislike it in any point, say so now. After signing we have some goods to give you, and next summer will give you some more; and after that you must wait until the paper comes back from the Great Father. The goods now given are not in payment for your lands; they are merely a friendly present.”

The Indians had some discussion, and Governor Stevens then put the question: “Are you ready? If so, I will sign it.” There were no objections, and the treaty was then signed by Governor I.I. Stevens, and the chiefs, delegates, and headmen on the part of the Indians, and duly witnessed by the secretary, special agent, and seventeen citizens present.

The presents and provisions were then given to the chiefs, who distributed them among their people. Towards evening Mr. Swan arrived with twenty-nine Indians of the Puyallup tribe, and reported twenty more on the way. They had started three days before, but had been detained by bad weather. The governor decided to send them presents from Olympia.

Thus it will be seen that the governor first explained the objects and terms of the treaty generally, and the next day had the text of it read to them and also explained. The idea of selling their lands and being paid for them was not new to the Indians, for the settlers were in the habit of assuring them, when they objected and complained at the appropriation and fencing up of their choicest camping, root, and berry grounds, that the Great Father would soon pay them well for their country.

The scope and policy of the treaty will best appear by the following abstract of its thirteen articles:—

1. The Indians cede their land to the United States, comprising the present counties of Thurston, Pierce, and parts of Mason and King.

2. Sets off and describes the reservations, viz., Klah-she-min Island, known as Squaxon Island, situated opposite the mouths of Hammersley’s and Totten’s inlets, and separated from Hartstene Island by Pearl Passage, containing about two sections of land, or 1280 acres, a square tract of two sections near and south of the mouth of McAlister’s Creek, and another equal tract on the south side of Commencement Bay, now covered by the city of Tacoma. Provision is made for the Indians to remove to these reservations, and for roads through them and from them to the nearest public highways.

3. Gives the Indians the right of fishing at their accustomed grounds, except the right of taking shell-fish from beds staked out or cultivated by citizens, and the rights of hunting, gathering berries and roots, and pasturing herds on unclaimed land.

4. $32,500 to be paid in annuities of goods, clothing, and useful articles during the next twenty years.

5. And $3250 to be expended in aiding the Indians to settle on their reservations.

6. Empowers the President to remove the Indians to other reservations, when the interests of the Territory require it, by remunerating them for their improvements.

7. Prohibits the use of annuities to pay the debts of individuals.

8. Prohibits war or depredations, and the Indians agree to submit all grievances to the government for settlement.

9. Excludes ardent spirits from the reservations on penalty of withholding annuities.

10. Provides at a central or general agency a free school, a blacksmith shop, and a carpenter shop, and to furnish a blacksmith, a carpenter, a farmer, and teachers, all to give instructions for twenty years.

11. Frees all slaves and abolishes slavery.

12. Prohibits the Indians from trading outside the dominions of the United States, and forbids foreign Indians to reside on the reservations without the permission of the superintendent or agent.

13. The treaty to go into effect as soon as ratified by the President and Senate.

The twelfth article was aimed against the liquor traffic, and also to counteract the undue influence of the Hudson Bay Company. It carried out the idea expressed in the governor’s instructions to McClellan and Saxton at the outset of the exploration, already quoted. “The Indians must look to us for protection and counsel.... I am determined, in my intercourse with the Indians, to break up the ascendency of the Hudson Bay Company, and permit no authority or sanction to come between the Indians and the officers of this government.”

Sixty-two Indians signed this treaty, “chiefs, headmen, and delegates of the Nisqually, Puyallup, Steilacoom, Squawksin, S’Homamish, Steh-chass, T’Peek-sin, Squiaitl, and Sa-ha-wamish tribes and bands of Indians, occupying the lands lying around the head of Puget Sound and the adjacent inlets, who, for the purpose of this treaty, are to be regarded as one nation.” The Indians all made their marks to their names as written out in full by the secretary. They were: Qui-ee-metl, Sno-ho-dum-set, Lesh-high, Slip-o-elm, Kwi-ats, Sta-hi, Di-a-keh, Hi-ten, Squa-ta-hun, Kahk-tse-min, So-nan-o-youtl, Kl-tehp, Sahl-ko-min, T’Bet-ste-heh-bit, Tcha-hoos-tan, Ke-cha-hat, Spee-peh, Swe-yah-tum, Chah-achsh, Pich-kehd, S’Klah-o-sum, Sah-le-tatl, See-lup, E-la-kah-ka, Slug-yeh, Hi-nuk, Ma-mo-nish, Cheels, Knut-ca-nu, Bats-ta-ko-be, Win-ne-ya, Klo-out, Se-uch-ka-nam, Ske-mah-han, Wuts-un-a-pum, Quuts-a-tadm, Quut-a-heh-mtsn, Yah-leh-chn, To-tahl-kut, Yul-lout, See-ahts-oot-soot, Ye-tah-ko, We-po-it-ee, Kah-sld, La’h-hom-kan, Pah-how-at-ish, Swe-yehm, Sah-hwill, Se-kwaht, Kah-hum-kit, Yah-kwo-bah, Wut-sah-le-wun, Sah-ba-hat, Tel-e-kish, Swe-keh-nam, Sit-oo-ah, Ko-quel-a-cut, Jack, Keh-kise-be-lo, Go-yeh-hn, Sah-putsh, William.

Lesh-high, the third signer, was the principal chief and instigator of the Indian war that broke out the following year, and, after the outbreak was suppressed, was tried and executed for the murder of settlers, after an excited controversy and strenuous efforts to save him on the part of some of the regular officers. Born of a Yakima mother, he was a chief of unusual intelligence and energy, had much to do with the Hudson Bay Company’s people at Fort Nisqually, by whom he was much trusted as a guide and hunter, and was supposed to be well affected towards the whites. The first signer, Qui-ee-muth, was Lesh-high’s brother, and met with a more tragic fate, being slain by a revengeful settler after he was captured. Sta-hi, the fifth signer, was killed during the Indian war.

The witnesses who signed the treaty, nineteen in number, including well-known public men and pioneers, were the following: M.T. Simmons, Indian agent; James Doty, secretary; C.H. Mason, secretary of the Territory; W.A. Slaughter, 1st lieutenant, 4th infantry, U.S. A.; James McAlister, E. Giddings, Jr., George Shazer, Henry D. Cock, Orrington Cushman, S.S. Ford, Jr., John W. McAlister, Peter Anderson, Samuel Klady, W.H. Pullen, F.O. Hough, E.R. Tyerall, George Gibbs, Benjamin F. Shaw, interpreter, Hazard Stevens.

The governor became satisfied at a later date that the reservations set off for the Nisquallies and Puyallups were inadequate for their future needs, being of inferior soil and heavily timbered, and in 1856 caused them to be exchanged for two larger tracts of fine, fertile bottom land,—one on the Nisqually, a few miles above its mouth, and the other at the mouth of the Puyallup River, directly opposite the city of Tacoma, which the Indians still occupy.

In the evening, after the council broke up, the governor had another long conference with his advisory board, and settled the points and programme for other treaties. The next morning, directing Gibbs to survey the lines of the two reservations on Nisqually and Commencement bays, and dispatching Simmons and Shaw with the rest of the party in the schooner to the lower Sound to assemble the Indians for the remaining treaties, he returned to Olympia with Mason and Doty. The treaty was immediately forwarded to Washington, and was ratified by the Senate, March 3, 1855, but little over two months after the council.