For unknown ages the Indians had traveled a well-worn but crooked and difficult trail through this pass, followed by the Hudson Bay people later in their intercourse with the over-mountain tribes, but it remained for the resolute pioneers of 1853 to open a wagon road over the formidable Cascade range of mountains to connect the two sections of the Territory, otherwise so completely separated from each other.
Congress had appropriated twenty thousand dollars for the construction of a military road from Fort Steilacoom to Wallula on the Columbia River, but it was patent to all the appropriation could not be made available in time for the incoming immigration known to be on the way.
This knowledge impelled the settlers to make extraordinary efforts to open the road, as related in this and succeeding chapters.
Meetings had been held at various points to forward the scheme and popular subscription lists circulated for prosecuting this laudable enterprise. It was a great undertaking for the scattered pioneers, particularly where so many were newcomers with scant provision yet made for food or shelter for the coming winter.
But everyone felt this all important enterprise must be attended to, to the end that they might divert a part of the expected immigration which would otherwise go down the Columbia or through passes south of that river, and thence into Oregon, and be lost to the new but yet unorganized territory of Washington.
And yet in the face of all the sacrifices endured and the universal public spirit manifested, there are men who would belittle the efforts of the citizens of that day and malign their memories by accusing them of stirring up discontent among the Indians. "A lot of white men who were living with Indian women, and who were interested in seeing that the country remained common pasture as long as possible." A more outrageous libel was never penned against the living or dead. In this case but few of the actors are left, but there are records, now fifty years old that it is a pleasure to perpetuate for the purpose of setting this matter aright, and also of correcting some errors that have crept into the treacherous memories of the living, and likewise to pay a tribute to the dead. Later in life I knew nearly all these sixty-nine men, subscribers to this fund, and so far as I know now all are dead but eight, and I know the underlying motive that prompted this strenuous action; they wanted to see the country settled up with the sturdy stock of the overland immigrants.
The same remark applies to the intrepid road workers, some of whom it will be seen camped on the trail for the whole summer, and labored without money and without price to that end.
It is difficult to abridge the long quotation following, illustrating so vividly as it does the rough and ready pioneer life as Winthrop saw and so sparklingly described. Such tributes ought to be perpetuated, and I willingly give up space for it from his work, "The Canoe and the Saddle," which will repay the reader for careful perusal. Winthrop gives this account as he saw the road-workers the last week of August, 1853, in that famous trip from Nisqually to The Danes. Belated and a little after nightfall, he suddenly emerged from the surrounding darkness where, quoting his words:
"A score of men were grouped about a fire. Several had sprung up, alert at our approach. Others reposed untroubled. Others tended viands odoriferous and frizzing. Others stirred the flame. Around, the forest rose, black as Erebus, and the men moved in the glare against the gloom like pitmen in the blackest coal mines.