"In those early days the Indians were very plentiful. I have seen as many as 100 or more pass by our place in one day, their destination being the Camas and Kouse districts, as Camas Prairie was then called. Then, later in the season, they would go to a lake at the head of the Yakima River, high up in the mountains, where the squaws would fish, and the men hunt deer, which were plentiful.
"During these camping periods, horse racing was the principal amusement; the Indians had many fine, fast horses, and the several tribes wagered many dollars and trinkets on the merits of their race stock. During this racing season many unscrupulous white men, or 'renegades,' would arrive, camping close by, winning the money of the Indians and selling them liquor.
"The Alpowa Indians were very friendly, and the squaws would work for me; I would hire them to work in the garden. They would take potatoes for their pay and pack them on their ponies. If not watched, they would steal some of the vegetables, but most of them did an honest day's work and were satisfied with what I gave them for their labor.
"Sometimes I could buy huckleberries from the Indians and dried antelope hams during the first few years we lived here. There was an old Indian called 'Squally John,' who would catch salmon on the Snake River and bring them to us. They would catch hundreds of them and dry them for the winter and would also get plenty of venison in our mountains.
"I was afraid of the Indians for a few years, but got over that feeling. It was slow work for one or two men to make a farm. Not a furrow had ever been plowed when we came, no fencing. Barbed wire was not known then, and Mr. Pomeroy had to haul feed for his team, and seed grain from the Touchet; and that, with the timber hauling from the mountains, kept him busy, which left the cows and the chores and all kinds of outdoor work for me to do with one hired man and the help of the children.
"I was a very busy woman, although I did find time to teach the children to read and write, and the first lessons were learned at home. There was a school taught at Dayton the summer of 1869, and we sent Clara and Ned there. This was a four months' term. The next year we sent Clara to the sisters at Walla Walla, then, in 1872, Bishop Wells started the St. Paul School, and Clara was one of the pupils there, until she finished her schooling and was married to Eugene T. Wilson, on Christmas Day, 1877.
"In the meantime we had opened a school at the Owsley place, and our two children attended school there, going five miles in a buggy. There were ten pupils the first year. The country was settling up everywhere by this time; many had settled on the Pataha Prairie, and Alpowa, and over in the Deadman country and along the Pataha Creek.
"When the flour mill was built, a man wanted to put in a stock of goods; then others came, and a town was laid out.
"Then there was no more frontier."
That Mrs. St. George succeeded at the stage station and in that vital and fundamental requisite of the traveler in the days of the stage, viz., good eatables, well cooked and served, was abundantly proven. A writer in the Walla Walla Union in 1894 drew a toothsome picture of the gastronomic attractions at Pomeroy and Alpowa, as follows: