Many remained in the settlement, others left the country for safer regions, while a few cultivated land under volunteer military guard in order to provide the settlement with vegetables.
The Yesler mill cookhouse, a log structure, was made historical in those days. The hungry soldiers after a night watch were fed there and rushed therefrom to the battle.
While there was no church, hotel, storehouse, courthouse or jail it was all these by turns. No doubt those who were sheltered within its walls, ran the whole gamut of human emotion and experience.
In the Puget Sound Weekly of July 30th, 1866, published in Seattle, it was thus described:
“There was nothing about this cook house very peculiar, except the interest with which old memories had invested it. It was simply a dingy-looking hewed log building, about twenty-five feet square, a little more than one story high, with a shed addition in the rear, and to strangers and newcomers was rather an eye-sore and nuisance in the place—standing as it did in the business part of the town, among the more pretentious buildings of modern construction, like a quaint octogenarian, among a band of dandyish sprigs of young America. To old settlers, however, its weather-worn roof and smoke-blackened walls, inside and out, were vastly interesting from long familiarity, and many pleasant and perhaps a few unpleasant recollections were connected with its early history, which we might make subjects of a small volume of great interest, had we time to indite it. Suffice it to say, however, that this old cook house was one among the first buildings erected in Seattle; was built for the use of the saw mill many years since, and though designed especially for a cook house, has been used for almost every conceivable purpose for which a log cabin, in a new and wild country, may be employed.
“For many years the only place for one hundred miles or more along the eastern shores of Puget Sound, where the pioneer settlers could be hospitably entertained by white men and get a square meal, was Yesler’s cook house in Seattle, and whether he had money or not, no man ever found the latch string of the cook house drawn in, or went away hungry from the little cabin door; and many an old Puget Sounder remembers the happy hours, jolly nights, strange encounters and wild scenes he has enjoyed around the broad fireplace and hospitable board of Yesler’s cook house.
“During the Indian war this building was the general rendezvous of the volunteers engaged in defending the thinly populated country against the depredations of the savages, and was also the resort of the navy officers on the same duty on the Sound. Judge Lander’s office was held in one corner of the dining room; the auditor’s office, for some time, was kept under the same roof, and, indeed, it may be said to have been used for more purposes than any other building on the Pacific coast. It was the general depository from which law and justice were dispensed throughout a large scope of surrounding country. It has, at different times, served for town hall, courthouse, jail, military headquarters, storehouse, hotel and church; and in the early years of its history served all these purposes at once. It was the place of holding elections, and political parties of all sorts held their meetings in it, and quarreled and made friends again, and ate, drank, laughed, sung, wept, and slept under the same hospitable roof. If there was to be a public gathering of the settlers of any kind and for any purpose, no one ever asked where the place of meeting was to be, for all knew it was to be at the cook house.
“The first sermon, by a Protestant, in King county was preached by the Rev. Mr. Close in the old cook house. The first lawsuit—which was the trial of the mate of the Franklin Adams, for selling ship’s stores and appropriating the proceeds—came off, of course, in the old cook house. Justice Maynard presided at this trial, and the accused was discharged from the old cook house with the wholesome advice that in future he should be careful to make a correct return of all his private sales of other people’s property.
“Who, then, knowing the full history of this famous old relic of early times, can wonder that it has so long been suffered to stand and moulder, unused, in the midst of the more gaudy surroundings of a later civilization? And who can think it strange, when, at last, its old smoky walls were compelled to yield to the pressure of progression, and be tumbled heedlessly into the street, that the old settler looked sorrowfully upon the vandal destruction, and silently dropped a tear over its leveled ruins. Peace to the ashes of the old cook house.”
While the pioneers lingered in the settlement, they enjoyed the luxury of living in houses of sawed lumber. Time has worked out his revenges until what was then disesteemed is much admired now. A substantial and picturesque lodge of logs, furnished with modern contrivances is now regarded as quite desirable, for summer occupation at least.
The struggle of the Indians to regain their domain resulted in many sanguinary conflicts. The bloody wave of war ran hither and yon until spent and the doom of the passing race was sealed.
Seattle and the whole Puget Sound region were set back ten years in development. Toilsome years they were that stretched before the pioneers. They and their families were obliged to do whatever they could to obtain a livelihood; they were neither ashamed nor afraid of honest work and doubtless enjoyed the reward of a good conscience and vigorous health.
Life held many pleasures and much freedom from modern fret besides. As one of them observed, “We were happy then, in our log cabin homes.”
Long after the incidents herein related occurred, one of the survivors of the White River massacre wrote the following letter, which was published in a local paper: