Middle block-house at the Cascades.
Night fell on the Puget Sea. The people went into the block-house to sleep, and the men of the Decatur guarded the town, taking their stations on shore. As the night deepened, a thousand hostile Indians crept up to the place and awaited the morning, when the guard should go on board the ship for breakfast, and the people should come out of the block-house and go to their houses, and "set the gun behind the door."
It was on this night, according to the legend, that "Old Angeline," as she is now called, became the messenger that saved the inhabitants from destruction.
The legend has been doubted; and when we asked the short, flat-faced old woman, as she answered our knock, if she was the daughter of the chief who saved Seattle, she simply said, "Chief," grinned, and made a bow. She was ready to accept the traditional honors of the wild legend worthy of the pen of a Cooper.
On returning from our visit to old Angeline, we asked Hon. Henry Yesler, the now rich pioneer, why the princess was not better cared for by the people of the city. He himself had been generous to her. "Why," he said, "if you were to give her fifty dollars, she would give it all away before night!" Benevolent old Angeline! She ought to live in a palace instead of a hovel! Mr. Yesler doubted the local legend, but I still wished to believe it to be true.
V.
The story of "Whitman's Ride for Oregon" has been told in verse by the writer of this volume, as follows:
WHITMAN'S RIDE FOR OREGON.
I.