“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.
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.