From the beginning of the 50’s the settlement of the country became too swift to permit of following the individual pioneers in their brave and daring exploits in hewing homes out of the primeval wilderness. There was no general way of reaching Puget Sound up to this time except by the toilsome trail from the Columbia river, and the necessity of a steamer from San Francisco became the leading topic in the settlements. Capt. A. B. Gove of the ship Pacific took the matter up and agitation, as it always does, soon after had the desired effect.
The report of Wilke’s expedition and the development of the fur trade caused American interests to be directed toward this country. The account of Joe Meek who went overland from Walla Walla and gave such glowing descriptions of the Territory of Oregon had its effect, 1848, as he expressed himself; “this was the finest country that ever a bird flew over.”
The lower house of Congress passed a bill to establish a territorial government for Oregon January 10, 1847, but many difficulties were in the way before it became a law, and the slave question, 1848, had its influence. It was in the middle of August of the last year of President Polk’s administration before the territorial government bill for Oregon became a law and the long journey over the mountains caused much more delay.
Joseph Lane of Indiana was appointed Oregon’s first Governor with Knitzing Pritchett of Pennsylvania as Secretary, W. P. Bryant of Indiana as Chief Justice, F. Turney of Illinois and P. H. Burnett of Oregon as Associate Justices, I. W. R. Bromley of New York as United States Attorney, Joseph L. Meek Marshal and John Adair of Kentucky Collector of the District of Oregon. Turney declining, O. C. Pratt of Ohio was named in his place. Bromley also declined and Amory Holbrook was appointed in his place. The party landed at Oregon City two days before the expiration of Polk’s term of office.
During the fall of 1852 the people of Northern Oregon, now Washington, were loud in their demands for a separate territory and The Columbian, a bright little paper published at Olympia, became a zealous worker in behalf of a separate jurisdiction.
Northern Oregon was at first slow to attract the full tide of emigration, the worn out travelers who had journeyed across the plains were glad to find a resting place in the valleys of the Columbia or Willamette and those people who had homes established in Southern Oregon were always eager to discourage the emigration to the northern territory and often circulated reports condemning the Puget Sound country that caused a degree of enmity to exist between the two sections of the Northwest. The majority of the population being south of the Columbia river had the result of causing the attention of the government to be always directed to that part of the country and every appropriation from Congress was for the benefit of Southern Oregon and for a time the country bordering on Puget Sound was left to take care of itself. That naturally caused the people who had sought homes in that northern part of the country to ask that they be formed into a separate territory.
Not among the least of the trials and dangers which beset the early pioneer, were those which arose by reason of the contact with Indians. The average Siwash was a peaceable being, but the worst danger came from the deceitful and savage northern tribes and east of the mountain clans. From Nootka sound, Queen Charlotte and Vancouver islands, came swarms of the red devils in their nimble canoes and left havoc and destruction among many a pleasant home and settlement. Across the Cascade passes came bands of painted warriors spreading terror and death on every side.
Numbers of the early settlers fell early victims to the atrocities of these bloodthirsty bands, and their names are only remembered by the few survivors whose silver hair and wrinkled features form objects of interest, as they stand upon the pavement, in the pushing throng now crowding our busy thoroughfares. If you will ask Charles Prosch, Hillory Butler, Judge Swan, John Collins, G.A. Meigs and other old patriarchs yet among us, they can recount many a stirring tale of battle and ambush, and name over many an old settler who years ago gave away his life in his efforts to pave the way for the thousands, who, happy in the peaceful present, go about their daily work with scarce a thought of those early times.
Concerning themselves the rightful owners of the soil, the Indians, looked with jealous eye upon the daily encroachment of the whites and regarded with increasing and ominous distrust the oft repeated and oft broken promises held out to them that this land would be purchased under treaties with the government. Then the habits of the Indian was disgusting to the eye of civilization and no language can ever draw the slothful and dirtyness of this people, yet there were many wrongs done them and it was no more than could be expected that they would, true to their nature, do such acts of barbarity as would shock the whites and bring upon the Indian a terrible revenge and that a war for supremacy would only end in his discomfiture.
“Money was plentiful,” remarks one of the early chroniclers of those times, “and I was not a little surprised at the abundance of money in the hands of the people. All but the farmers seemed to carry purses well filled with twenty dollar gold pieces. The farmers had been driven from their homes and impoverished by the Indian wars of 1856, from the effects of which they had not had time to recover; but the men engaged in cutting piles and logging for the mills (and they comprised a large proportion of the whites here) suffered but little from the same cause. The man who owned the building in which I first printed my paper could neither read nor write, but managed to earn thirty dollars a day by hauling piles with three yoke of oxen from the timber to the water. Soldiers received permission from the officers to cut these piles, and earned ten dollars each a day. All lumbermen were paid in like manner.”