A stone tablet inscribed "Site of Ezra Meeker's Cabin Home," completes the record to be read by the many generations to follow.
Just who is the person that first conceived the idea to erect this memorial is unknown to the author. The organization known as the Puyallup Ladies' Club assumed the responsibility and carried the work to completion. A letter from the President reached me at Elm Creek, Neb., while on the last drive with the ox team homeward bound, informing me of the arrangement for dedicating the tablet and requesting if possible to be present and "make a short address." This was the first information I had of the contemplated work. I could not possibly leave my work on the Oregon Trail in time to reach home and be present, so I bethought myself to be present in spoken words and voice even if I could not be in person. My address was spoken into the wonderful "thing of life," shall I call it? No, not of life, "the spirit of life," that is named the "phonograph", that recorded the very tones of my voice that would be familiar to my friends at home, although at the time these words would be reproduced I would be nearly two thousand miles distant, climbing up the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains, or more accurately speaking on the summit and above the clouds of the midsummer day. The records of the address reached the hands of the ladies in due time, when lo and behold, instead of a few friends as anticipated more than a thousand came to see and listen, and as all could not hear, the address was read in full after a part had been reproduced from the phonograph. As a part of the history of the cabin and of pioneer life it is here reproduced for the greater audience, the readers of this volume:
"This is Ezra Meeker talking, June 8th, 1912, Elm Creek, Neb., 211 miles west of Omaha. I am on my way home to the Pacific Coast. This is my fourth trip with an ox team over the Oregon Trail. I crossed the Missouri River ten miles below Kanesville, now Council Bluffs, Ia., and drove out from the river on my first trip, May 19th, 1852, and arrived at the straggling village of Portland, Ore., Oct. 1st of the same year. We encountered the buffalo before reaching Elm Creek, and did get some scourge of cholera, which also soon after that caused the death of thousands of pioneers. On my second trip I started from my home at Puyallup, Wash., Jan. 29, 1906, and drove over the Trail getting people to erect granite monuments to perpetuate the memory of the Oregon pioneers, and to mark the Trail they had made, which has resulted in the erection of fifty of these monuments. [30] I then drove to Washington City to invoke the aid of the Government, where I arrived Nov. 29, 1907; met President Roosevelt, secured favorable committee report on a bill appropriating money to blaze and mark the Trail. I returned home during the summer of 1908, shipping most of the way. I made my third trip in 1910 to secure data to estimate the cost of the work, and now have 1,600 miles of the Trail platted showing the section line crossings."
I am 81 years old, 44 years a farmer in the one location where this cabin is.
THE ADDRESS.
"My mind harks back to the virgin forest surrounding the cabin; to the twilight concert of the bird songsters; to the dripping dews of the dense foliage of the trees; to the pleasant gathering within the cabin; to the old time music of the violin, flute, melodeon, and finally the piano, mingled with the voices of many now hushed and hidden from us; to the simple life of the pioneer; to the cheerful glow of the double open fires within the cabin; to the more cheerful glow of contentment notwithstanding the stern battle of life confronting the inmates of the cabin—all these visions vividly arise before me, and not only intensifies my interest in this occasion, but brings uppermost in mind the importance of this work.
"As we better understand each other or the ways of each generation we are sure to profit by their failures on the one hand, as well as by their successes on the other. The difference between a civilized and untutored people lies in the application of this principle, and we perhaps build better than we know or can realize in the furtherance of such work consummated here today.
"May we not for a few moments indulge in some old time reminiscences? When we entered this cabin we were without a team, without a wagon, without money and with but scant supply of household goods and clothing; seven cows and a steer (Harry), a few pigs and a dozen or so of chickens comprising our worldly belongings, albeit the bears divided the pigs with us and the skunks took their share of the chickens. One cow traded to Robert Moore for a steer (Jack) to mate the one we had, gave us a team.
"The loss of the steamship Northerner had carried all our accumulations with it and also the revered brother, Oliver Meeker, who, had he lived, was destined to make his mark in the annals of the history of this great State.
"If the walls of this cabin had had ears and could speak, we could hear of the councils when the shoes gave out; of the trip to Steilacoom for two sides of leather, a shoe hammer, awls, thread and the like; of the lasts made from split alder blocks; of shoe pegs split with a case knife and seasoned in the oven; of how the oldest pig suffered and died that we might have bristles for the wax ends; of how, with a borrowed auger and our own axe a sled was made and work in earnest in the clearing began; of how in two years the transplanted orchard began to bear; of how the raspberries, blackberries and other small fruit came into full bearing and salmon berries were neglected and Siwash muck-a-muck had lost its attraction; of how the steamed ladyfinger potatoes would burst open just like popcorn and of how the meat of the baked kidney potatoes would open as white as the driven snow; small things to be sure, but we may well remember the sum of life's happiness is made up of small things and that as keen enjoyment of life exists within the walls of a cabin as in a palace.