To have a large, heavy animal squirming about, getting up and lying down frequently, must have tried their nerve severely and it must have taken good management to prevent a serious catastrophe. The Bell family were camped at that time on their claim in a rude shelter of Indian boards and mats.
The handful of white men at Alki spent their time and energy in getting out piles for the San Francisco market. At first they had very few appliances for handling the timber. The first vessel to load was the brig Leonesa, which took a cargo of piles, cut, rolled and hauled by hand, as there were no cattle at the settlement.
There were also no roads and Lee Terry went to Puyallup for a yoke of oxen, which he drove down on the beach to Alki. Never were dumb brutes better appreciated than these useful creatures.
But the winter, or rather rainy season, wore away; as spring approached the settlers explored the shores of the Sound far and near and it became apparent that Alki must wait till “by and by,” as the eastern shore of Elliott Bay was found more desirable and the pioneers prepared to move again by locating donation claims on a portion of the land now covered by a widespread city, which will bring us to the next chapter, “The Founding of Seattle and Indian War.”
The following is a brief recapitulation of the first days on Puget Sound; in these later years we see the rapid and skillful construction of elegant mansions, charming cottages and stately business houses, all in sight of the spot where stood the first little cabin of the pioneer. The builders of this cabin were D. T. Denny, J. N. Low and Lee Terry, assisted by the Indians, the only tools, an ax and a hammer, the place Alki Point, the time, the fall of 1851.
They baked their bread before the fire on a willow board hewed from a piece of a tree which grew near the camp; the only cooking vessel was a tin pail; the salmon they got off the Indians was roasted before the fire on a stick.
The cabin was unfinished when the famous landing was made, November 13th, 1851, because J. N. Low returned to Portland, having been on the Sound but a few days, then Lee Terry boarded Collins’ scow on its return trip up Sound leaving D. T. Denny alone for about three weeks, during most of which time he was ill. This was Low’s cabin; after the landing of Bell, Boren and A. A. Denny and the others of the party, among whom were Low and C. C. Terry, a roof was put on the unfinished cabin and they next built A. A. Denny’s and then two cabins of split cedar for Bell and Boren and their families.
When they moved to the east side of Elliott Bay, Bell’s was the first one built. W. N. Bell and D. T. Denny built A. A. Denny’s on the east side, as he was sick. D. T. Denny had served an apprenticeship in cabin building, young as he was, nineteen years of age, before he came to Puget Sound.
The first of D. T. Denny’s cabins he built himself with the aid of three Indians. There was not a stick or piece of sawed stuff in it.
However, by the August following his marriage, which took place January 23rd, 1853, he bought of H. L. Yesler lumber from his sawmill at about $25.00 per M. to put up a little board house, sixteen by twenty feet near the salt water, between Madison and Marion streets, Seattle.