ASOTIN FROM IDAHO, LOOKING WEST
Turning from these pre-settlement times to the era of the entrance of permanent residents, we wish to pay our acknowledgments first of all to certain old-time citizens of the country from whom we derived information and received the courtesies which our pioneers know so well how to bestow. Without undertaking to name all to whom we are thus indebted we may especially refer to Mr. Edward Baumeister, Mr. George Sauer, Major Boggan, J. D. Swain, Doctor Fulton, Mr. and Mrs. L. J. Wormell, Mr. John Romaine, Mr. A. J. Crow, Mrs. Lilian Clemans Merchant, Mr. Kay L. Thompson of the Sentinel for use of the files of his excellent paper, and Mr. Charles S. Florence, city clerk of Asotin, for use of city records. Prof. W. J. Jerome has kindly provided information regarding the schools and churches. Mr. and Mrs. F. G. Morrison of Clarkston are the earliest old-timers now living at that comparatively new point and gave valuable information. One of the most interesting of all the old-timers of the entire region is O. F. Canfield of Clarkston, who, though comparatively a new resident of Clarkston, has been familiar with the region since 1847, and is a storehouse of varied information about early days. For more recent history, Messrs. Foster and Westervelt of the Lewiston-Clarkston Company have provided much valuable data relating to the great enterprise of their company, the greatest of its kind in this part of the state. We are indebted to Mr. J. E. Hoobler, Mr. E. E. Halsey, one of our advisory board, and G. L. Ackley, city clerk, for other more recent information about Clarkston. The "History of Southeast Washington," published in 1906 by the Western Historical Publishing Company of Spokane, contains a large amount of valuable matter and to it we make acknowledgment for various data and early statistics.
Mr. Baumeister has directed our attention to the interesting fact that when Asotin was part of Walla Walla County there was a voting precinct opposite Lewiston known as Asotin Precinct. No one lived there at that time, but the precinct was laid out to accommodate miners or packers who might be going to Idaho, but who claimed Walla Walla as their residence.
A view of the beginnings of white settlement in what is now Asotin County following the era of the trappers takes us back to historic times, when Spalding gave Red Wolf (Herminilpip) apple seeds from which trees grew, one of which can still be seen at the mouth of the Alpowa; when Colonel Craig and "Doctor" Newell ranged through the country; and when Timothy, the savior of Steptoe's defeated command, and Tema, his "klootchman," lived on the Alpowa, the "place of rest," as they called it, where this old aboriginal couple lived genuine Christian lives, a good deal better than some of the supposed superior race. Tema is said by Newton Hibbs, as quoted in the "History of Southeast Washington," to have even remembered the coming of Lewis and Clark.
The earliest permanent settler on the Asotin seems to have been Jerry Maguire. His location was on the creek about three miles above its mouth. According to Mr. Boozer, his son-in-law, now living in Asotin, the location was made in 1866. His attention was mainly given to stock raising, though he engaged also in the business of packing supplies to the mining camps. A little later Thomas Rebusco took up a place on the creek where he raised vegetables, apparently the first in the county, for which there was a great demand in the mines. Another of those earliest settlers on the Asotin was D. M. White, right at the present location of the town. Noble Henry, now living on the reservation in Idaho, took up a residence for a time, beginning in 1868, a "squaw-man." In the early '70s some addition was made, though seemingly in a somewhat sporadic and experimental manner. The man who might be styled the founder of the Town of Asotin was Theodore M. E. Schank. The Sentinel of October 9, 1885, in giving an obituary notice of Mr. Schank, says: "Mr. T. M. E. Schank was born in Christiania, Norway, and emigrated to this country in 1852, and engaged in the harness and saddlery business in New York City. About the year 1854 he, in company with others, left for South America, Mr. Schank locating at Buenaventura, U. S. of Colombia, where he engaged in business. One year after his arrival there he departed for California, where he was successfully engaged in mining for a number of years, from where he drifted to the Puget Sound country, where he engaged in business of various kinds. During the mining excitement of 1860, Mr. Schank went to Lewiston, Idaho, and opened a harness and saddlery shop and did a thriving business." According to the Sentinel Mr. Schank located in 1872 or 1873. His location was on what is now the central part of Asotin, his house still being in existence. It was not till a number of years later that he undertook to start the town, and that is another story. In 1870, Charles Lyon, T. P. Page and George B. Fancher, took claims farther up the creek. Gad Hopwood, William Hopwood, and James Hopwood, Lige Jones and David Mohler, were also among those earliest pioneers. Most of them were bachelors. Mrs. Fancher is said to have been the first white woman in the district.
Aside from rearing stock and putting up the little sawmills on the edge of the timber, there had as yet been no thought of utilizing the vast upland prairies of the major part of Asotin. As described earlier, those prairies were cut up by the swift descending tributaries of the Asotin, spreading out fan-like and dividing the highland into a series of prairies. There was a luxuriant growth of bunch-grass all over that wide expanse. The decade of the '70s had been a great time for development of wheat raising on the Walla Walla and Touchet. There had been some beginnings on the Pataha and Deadman. The idea had rather suddenly seized the minds of many men that where bunch-grass would grow so well wheat and barley would also grow. As a result of this sentiment the later '70s witnessed the greatest rush for homesteads as yet seen in the Inland Empire. Not alone south of Snake River, but into Whitman and Spokane counties and in the Big Bend country, the settlers poured in a steady stream. Having for a number of years thought of the high prairies and rolling hills which make up the larger part of Eastern Washington as suited only for pasture, the eager land hunters now suddenly became possessed of a land fever and by hundreds and thousands ran out their lines and set up their homes. It was a great time. Many suffered hardship, having to live in "dug-outs," and being scantily supplied with food and clothes. But it was just simply the great American story over again, and in that rush for land we read the very key to American life and progress, individual freedom and personal ownership of land and the instruments of wealth. There is really no way to cultivate genuine ambition and the qualities of true democracy except by the ownership of land. Where the bulk of the population are hired "hands" or day laborers, economic servitude is inevitable. Either State Socialism or personal ownership of land by the bulk of the people is what we must come to in this country. It looks very much as though we as a nation were at the deciding point. If big corporations, railroad monopolies, Weyerhaeuser timber syndicates, oil trusts, are to acquire the bulk of the land, it is either socialism or serfdom. The American people can take their choice. The rush for land is the evidence of their preference. So long as there is land distribution, as in the decade of the '70s, the American ideal is safe.
Among other regions which witnessed that land rush were the prairies of Asotin. It is safe to say that the majority of the families that located there (and the same is true of the larger part of Eastern Washington) made their locations in 1876, 1877, 1878 or 1879.