Farther up the Touchet, going on to the Patit and beyond in the vicinity of the present Dayton, Henri M. Chase and P. M. La Fontain had located before the great Indian wars, as already related. In the second stage of settlement, beginning in 1859, F. D. Schneble and Richard Learn upon the present location of Dayton, and near by Elisha Ping, J. C. Wells, Thomas and Israel Davis, S. L. Gilbreath (Mrs. Gilbreath was the first white woman to live in Columbia County), Jesse N. Day, Joseph Ruark, Joseph Boise, G. W. Miller, John and James Fudge, and John and Garrett Long, may be regarded as most distinctively the pioneers in the stock business, proceeding on within a few years to the usual evolution into farming and other branches of growing communities.
The region of what is now Garfield and Asotin counties had an early history similar to that of the Walla Walla, Mill Creek, Touchet, Coppei, and Patit regions, though not so complete. Settlers entered during that same stage of the '60s and sought stations on the creeks from which desirable cattle ranges extended. One of the earliest of all settlers of the old Walla Walla County was Louis Raboin at the point on the Tucanon now known as Marengo. Raboin might justly be called a pioneer of the pioneers, not only in stock raising, but in everything. Governor I. I. Stevens, in his report of railroad explorations, mentions him as located with his Indian wife and six children on the Tucanon, and the possessor of fifty horses and many cattle, and as having four acres of land in which potatoes and wheat were growing. The governor calls him Louis "Moragne'." According to Gilbert that name, from which Marengo was derived, had a curious origin. It seems that Raboin had been, like almost all the early French settlers of the Inland Empire, engaged in the trapping business. He was of a lively, active disposition and known by his comrades as "Maringouin" (mosquito). This cognomen became corrupted by the English-speaking people and finally became "Marengo."
Incoming settlers, seeking water courses for homes and bunch-grass hills and prairies for stock ranges after the usual fashion, were not long in discovering the best locations on the Pataha, Tucanon, Alpowa, and Asotin, and small spring branches, and cabins and cattle began to diversify that broad expanse through which Lewis and Clark had wandered in 1806, and with which Bonneville and other fur hunters of the '30s were delighted.
It was fully equal to the Touchet, Walla Walla, and Umatilla, with their tributaries toward the west. The advance guard upon the Pataha and the vicinity where Pomeroy now stands were Thomas Riley, James Rafferty, James Bowers, Parson Quinn, J. M. Pomeroy, from whom the town was named, Daniel McGreevy, and the brothers James and Walter Rigsby, Joseph S. Milan, Henry Owsley, Charles Ward, and Newton Estes.
Among the streams on which early settlements were made was the Alpowa, the pleasant sounding name of which signified in Nez Percé "Spring Creek." H. M. Spalding, the missionary, made a station there among the natives of the band of Red Wolf and in 1837 or 1838 planted apple seeds from which some trees still exist. Timothy, famous in the Steptoe campaign, in which he saved the command from destruction and was afterwards rewarded after the usual fashion of the white race in dealing with Indians by being deprived of a country, was located on the Alpowa. His daughter was the wife of John Silcott of Lewiston, one of the most noted of early settlers.
Asotin Creek, with its tributaries, at the eastern limit of the region of which this history treats, is another section with a distinctive life of its own. It is one of the most beautiful and productive sections of this entire area, but being a little to one side of the sweep of travel and settlement, having no railroads to this day, was later of settlement than the other sections. Jerry McGuire is named as the first permanent settler on the Asotin, though there were several transients whom we will name later.
We will emphasize again that we are not trying here to name all the settlers of these sections, but rather those who from continuity of residence and subsequent connections become most illustrative of that first stage of settlement.
CABIN BUILT BY M. PETTIJOHN IN 1858
Jonathan Pettijohn is the man shown in the picture.