We had quite a lot of apple and peach trees which we obtained at the Tibbetts and Luelling nurseries, near Oregon City. I can tell you the Walla Walla Valley looked beautiful in those early spring days. It was just a waving sea of new grass, green all over without a fence or anything to obstruct riding anywhere that we might wish.
We reached our claim on March 28th. So far as I remember there was not another white boy in the whole valley, except at the fort, or whose parents were employed at the fort. Some of the army officers had children, but I hardly ever saw them. I had no playmates except the Indian children, and they were very friendly. There were no women, that is, no white women outside the fort, unless two or three transients. There were several Indian women married to white men, former Hudson's Bay men, down the valley at Frenchtown and elsewhere.
When we reached the claim we discovered that "Curly" Drumheller and Samuel Johnson had done some plowing on the south edge of our place, from the spring branch to Russell Creek. We sowed it with oats and there was a good crop, which we threshed out with flails in the fall. We set out some of our fruit trees on the flat just southeast of where Harry Reynolds' house now is. Those were, I am sure, the first trees ever brought to Walla Walla, that is, after those that had been raised from seed by Doctor Whitman at Waiilatpu. John Foster bought the trees which were set on his place from our lot. The bill for those trees from Seth Luelling is still in possession of my brother Will.
After remaining six weeks my father returned to Portland to get my mother and brother. I was left to keep the place, in company with Robert Horton. We had nothing but a tent for a house, but we managed to get along very comfortably. My main work was to cook. I helped plow on John Foster's place to help pay for the logs which Foster had gotten out that spring or summer for making our cabin. On Sundays and sometimes on other days I would go to "town," which was just a mongrel collection of shacks and tents, with a confused mass of settlers, Indians and soldiers straying through. The chief amusement was horse racing and gambling. There was a straightaway track where the cemetery now is and another just about through where the chief part of town now lies. The first circular track was laid out by George Porter about three miles down the valley, running around the peculiar hill on the Sam Smith place, afterward the Tom Lyons place.
The saloon business was very active then and every species of vice flourished. There was a man named Ed Leach who had come with father and me from The Dalles, who had afterwards drifted around town.
One day I was near the saloon owned by W. A. Ball, and I saw that there had just been something going on, for there was a bunch of men standing around talking excitedly.
Ed Leach was there, and seeing me he pulled me over to a place where I saw blood on the ground, and he said, pointing out the puddle of blood, "There, Charlie, is where I got him." He had just killed a man.
Nothing was done about it, so far as I know.
W. A. Ball was uncle of my wife, and one of the first business men in Walla Walla. He was the one especially who insisted on giving the name of Walla Walla to the town. Some wanted to call it Waiilatpu, while some favored Steptoeville.
One day while in town a man called to me saying that he had heard it rumored that my father was dead. I paid no attention to this, for I had heard from him a few days before, that he had safely reached home, was getting ready to return, and that everything was well. There were no mails at that time and the only way to get messages was through the army or by stray travelers. It would take a week or two to hear anything from Portland.