Blazing The Way Part 44

"'To whom it may concern: This will introduce Lord Jim, a noted Indian of this part of the country. Look out for him or he will steal the b.u.t.tons off your coat.' A further acquaintance with Lord Jim seemed to inspire the belief that the confidence of the writer was not misplaced.

"Shortly after we left Lord Jim we sailed along Protection Island, one of the beauty spots of the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

Somewhere along here another thing happened--trivial in its nature--the memory of which has stayed with me all these years.

Mr. Pettygrove was walking the deck in a meditative manner, when he happened to feel that he needed a cigar. He called to his son, Ben, about six years old, and told him to bring him some cigars.

Ben wanted to know how many he should get. His father told him to get as many as he had fingers on both hands. Ben, proud of his commission, darted away and soon returned with eight cigars. His father looked at them a moment and said: 'How is this; you have only brought me eight cigars?' 'Well,' said Ben, 'that is all the fingers I have.' 'No,' said his father, 'you have ten on both your hands.' 'Why, no I haven't,' said Ben, 'two of them are thumbs,' and I guess Ben was right.

"The next morning, after pa.s.sing Dungeness Spit, we found our vessel anch.o.r.ed abreast of what is now the business part of Port Townsend, which was then a large Indian village. That was February 21, 1852, fifty years ago today. How it stirs the blood and quickens the memory to look back over those eventful years--eventful years for our state, our Pacific Coast and our entire country--and these years have been equally eventful for the little band that landed here that day so full of hope and energy.

"Our fathers and mothers are all gone to their well-earned rest and reward. Of the thirteen children that were with them at that time nine are still living, and I am proud of the fact that they are all respectable citizens of the community in which they live.

They have seen all the history of this part of the country that amounts to much and in their humble way have helped to make it.

They have helped conquer the wilderness and the savages and have done their share in laying the foundation of what will be one of the greatest states of our Union. Their fathers were men of honesty and more than ordinary force of character, as their deeds and labors in behalf of their country and families show, and the mothers of blessed memory--their children never realized the power for good they were in this world until they were grown and had families of their own, but they know it now. They know now how they encouraged their husbands when dark days came; how they cheerfully shared the trials and hardships incident to those early pioneer days, and when brighter fortunes came they exercised the same helpful guiding influence in their well ordered, comfortable homes that they did in their first log cabins in the wilderness."

CHAPTER VII.

PERSONNEL OF THE PIONEER ARMY.

A long roll of honor I might call of the brave men and women who dared and strove in the wild Northwest of the long ago. If I speak of representative pioneers, those unnamed might be equally typical of the bold army of "forest-felling kings," "forest-fallers" as well as "fighters," like those Northland men of old.

There are the names of Denny, Yesler, Phillips, Terry, Low, Boren, Butler, Bell, Mercer, Maple, Van a.s.selt, Horton, Hanford, McConaha, Smith, Maynard, Frye, Blaine and others who felled the forest and laid foundations at and near Seattle; Briggs, Hastings, Van Bokkelin, Hammond, Pettygrove with others founded Port Townsend, while Lansdale, Crockett, Alexander, Cranney, Kellogg, Hanc.o.c.k, Izett, Busby, Ebey and Coupe, led the van for Whidby Island; Eldridge and Roeder at Bellingham Bay; toward the head of navigation, McAllister, Bush, Simmons, Packwood, Chambers, Shelton, are a few of those who blazed the way.

The blows of the st.u.r.dy forest-felling kings rang out from many a favored spot on the sh.o.r.es of the great Inland Sea, cheerful signals for the thousands to come after them.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WILLIAM R. BOREN REV. D. E. BLAINE CARSON D. BOREN]

These, and the long list of the Here Unnamed, waged the warfare of beginnings, which required such large courage, independence, persistence, faith and uncompromising toil, as the velvet-shod aftercomers can scarcely conceive of.

Simultaneously with the early subjugation of the country, the political, educational, commercial and social initiatory movements were made of whose present development the people of Puget Sound may well be proud.

Since the organization of the Washington Pioneer a.s.sociation in October, 1883, the old pioneers and their children have met year by year in the lavish month of June to recount their adventures, toils and privations, and enjoy the sympathy begotten of similar experiences, in the midst of modern ease and plenty.

A concourse of this kind in Seattle evoked the following words of appreciation:

"No organization, no matter what its nature might be, could afford the people of Seattle more gratification by holding its a.s.semblage in their midst than is afforded them by the action of the Pioneers' a.s.sociation of Washington Territory in holding its annual gathering in this city. Unlike conventions and gatherings in which only a portion of the community is interested, the meeting of the pioneers is interesting to all. To some, of course, the event is of more importance than to others, but all have an interest in the Pioneers' a.s.sociation, all have a pride in the achievement of its members, and all can feel that they are the beneficiaries of the struggle and hardships of which the pioneers tell.

"The reminiscences of the pioneers from the history of the first life breathings of our commonwealth--of a commonwealth which, though in its infancy, is grand indeed, and which gives promise of attaining greatness in the full maturity of its powers of which those who laid the foundations of the state scarcely dreamed. The pioneers are the fathers of the commonwealth; their struggles and their hardships were the struggles and the hardships of a state coming into being. They cleared the forests, not for themselves alone, but for posterity and for all time. As they subdued a wild and rugged land and prepared it to sustain and support its share of the people of the earth, each blow of their ax was a blow destined to resound through all time, each furrow turned by their ploughshares that the earth might yield again and again to their children's children so long as man shall inhabit the earth. No stroke of work done in the progress of that great labor was done in vain. None of the mighty energy was lost.

Each tree that fell, fell never to rise. Each nail driven in a settler's hut was a nail helping to bind together the fabric of the community. Each day's labor was given to posterity more surely than if it had been sold for gold to be buried in the earth and brought forth by delighted searchers centuries hence.

"It is for this that we honor the pioneers. It is for this that we are proud and happy to have them meet among us. We are their heirs. Our inheritance is the fruit of their labor, the reward of their fort.i.tude, the recompense of their hardships. The home of today, the center of comfort and contentment, the very soul of the state, could not have been but for the log cabins of forty years ago. The imposing edifice of learning, the complete system of education, could not have been but for the crude school house of the past. The churches and religious inst.i.tutions of today are the result of the untiring and unselfish labors of the itinerant preacher who wandered back and forth, now painfully picking his way through the forest, now threading with his frail canoe the silver streams, now gliding over the calm waters of the Sound, ever laying broad and deep the true foundations of the grand civilization that was to be. The flourishing cities, the steel rails that bind us to the world, the stately steamers that, behemoth-like, journey to and fro in our waters,--these things could not be but for the rude straggling hamlets, the bridle path cut with infinite labor through the most impenetrable of forests, and the canoe which darted arrow-like through gloomy pa.s.sages, over bright bays and up laughing waters.

"All honor to the pioneers--all honor and welcome. We say it who are their heirs, we whose homes are on the land which they reclaimed from the forests, we who till the fields that they first tilled, we whose pride and glory is the grand land-locked sea on which they gazed delighted so many years ago. Welcome to them, and may they come together again and again as the years pa.s.s away. When their eyes are dim with age and their hair is as white as the snows that cover the mountains they love, may they still see the land which they created the home of a great, proud people, a people loving the land they love, a people honoring and obeying the laws that they have honored and obeyed so long, a people honoring, glorying in, the flag which they bore over treeless plains, over lofty mountains, over raging torrents, through suffering and danger, always proudly, always confidently, always hopefully, until they planted it by the sh.o.r.e of the Western sea in the most beautiful of all lands. May each old settler, as he journeys year by year toward the sh.o.r.eless sea, over whose waters he must journey away, feel that the flag which he carried so far and so bravely will wave forever in the soft southwestern breeze, which kisses his furrowed brow and toys with his silvery hair. May he feel, too, that the love of the people is with him, that they watch him, lovingly, tenderly, as he journeys down the pathway, and the story of his deeds is graven forever on their minds, and love and honor forever on their hearts."

And so do I, a descendent of a long line of pioneers in America, reiterate, "Honor the Pioneers."

[Ill.u.s.tration: MRS. LYDIA C. LOW]

LYDIA C. LOW.

Mrs. Low was one of the party that landed at Alki, Nov. 13th, 1851, having crossed the plains with her husband and children.

I have heard her tell of seeing my father, D. T. Denny, the lone white occupant of Alki, as she stepped ash.o.r.e from the boat that carried the pa.s.sengers from the schooner.

The Lows did not make a permanent settlement there, but moved to a farm back of Olympia, thence to Sonoma, Cal., and back again to Puget Sound, where they made their home at Snohomish for many years. Mrs. Low was the mother of a large family of nine children, who shared her pioneer life.

Some died in childhood, accidents befell others, a part were more fortunate, yet she seemed in old age serene, courageous, undaunted as ever, faithful and true, lovely and beloved.

She pa.s.sed from earth away on Dec. 11th, 1901, her husband, John D. Low, having preceded her a number of years before.

OTHER PIONEERS.

Both Mr. and Mrs. Izett of Whidby Island are pioneers of note. Mrs.

Izett crossed the plains in 1847, and in 1852 came to the Sound on a visit, at the same time Mr. Izett happened to arrive. He persuaded her not to return to her old home. Mr. Izett in 1850 went to India from England by way of Cape Horn, and two years later came to Seattle. For four years he secured spars for the British government at Utsalady. In 1859 he built the first boat of any size to be constructed on Puget Sound. This was a 100-ton schooner, and she was built at Oak Harbor. In 1862 he framed two of the first Columbia river steamers. Mrs. Izett is a sister of Mrs. F. A. Chenoweth, whose husband was a judge, with four a.s.sociates, of the first Washington territorial tribunal. Another of the members was Judge McFadden. Mr. Izett knew well Gen. Isaac I. Stevens, the first governor of the territory. He came to Washington in the fall of 1859, and issued his first proclamation as governor the following February. The legislature met soon after.

J. W. MAPLE.

John Wesley Maple was not only one of the oldest settlers of this (King) county, but he was one of its most prominent men. He figured to some extent in political life, but during the last few years had retired to the homestead by the Duwamish, where his father had settled after crossing the plains nearly fifty years ago, and where he himself met his death yesterday. (In March of 1902.)

He was born in Guernsey county, Ohio, January 1, 1840. As a little boy he spent his childhood days near the farm of the McKinleys, and often during his later years he was fond of relating apple stealing expeditions in which he indulged as a little boy, and for which the father of the late President McKinley often chastised him. From Ohio his father, Jacob Maple, moved to Keokuk, Ia., where he lived near the farm on which Mayor Humes, of Seattle, was reared.

In 1856, Jacob Maple, the father, and Samuel Maple, the brother of John W., came to Puget Sound. In 1862 the rest of the family followed them.

In crossing the plains John W. Maple was made captain of the four wagon trains which were united in the expedition. He guided them to Pendleton, Ore., where they separated. Thence he came to the Duwamish river, where his father and brother had settled.

Later Mr. Maple and Samuel Snyder took up a homestead on Squak slough. A few years after that Mr. Maple went to Ellensburg. He finally returned to spend the rest of his life on the homestead.

HELD MANY OFFICES.

In the early days he was several times elected to county offices. He was at one time supervisor for the road district extending from Yesler way to O'Brien station and to Renton. In 1896 he was elected treasurer of King county on the Populist ticket. He furnished a bond of $1,600,000.

At the end of his term a shortage was found. Every cent of this was finally made good by him to those who stood on his bond.

In 1897 Mr. Maple received a complimentary vote on the part of several members of the state legislature for the office of United States senator. For this office his neighbors indorsed him, and August Toellnor, of Van a.s.selt, was sent by them to Olympia to see what could be done to further the candidacy. Since the end of his term as treasurer Mr. Maple has held no office, save that of school director in his district. Only a week ago Mr. Maple announced to his friends that he had left the Populist party and had returned to the Republican party, to which he had belonged prior to the wave of Populism which swept over the West in the early nineties.

During all of his life he was an ardent student of literature, and he possessed one of the finest libraries in the state. He was known as a strong orator, and was during his younger days an exhorter in the Methodist Protestant church, of which he was a member.

Mr. Maple was married twice. His first wife, who died more than twenty years ago, was Elizabeth Snyder, a daughter of Samuel Snyder, one of the oldest residents of the Duwamish valley. Six children were the fruit of this union, Charles, Alvin B., Cora, now Mrs. Frank Patten; Dora, now Mrs. Charles Norwich; Bessie, now dead, and Clifford J. Maple. His second wife was Minnie Borella. Three children were born to her, Telford C., Lelah and Beulah Maple.

Of his brothers and sisters the following are living: Mrs. Katherine Van a.s.selt and Mr. Eli B. Maple, of this city; Mrs. Jane Cavanaugh, of California; Mrs. Elvira Jones and Mrs. Ruth Smith, of Kent, and Aaron Maple, who now lives on the old Maple homestead in Iowa.

CHARLES PROSCH AND THOMAS PROSCH.

"The summer in which the gold excitement broke out in the Colville country, in 1855," said Thomas Prosch, "several members of a party of gold hunters from Seattle were ma.s.sacred by the Indians in the Yakima Valley while on their way to the gold fields. The party went through Snoqualmie Pa.s.s in crossing the mountains. The territorial legislature sent word to Washington and the government undertook to punish the guilty tribes by a detachment of troops under Maj. Haller. This was defeated and war followed for several years. It was most violent in King county in 1855 and 1856, and in Eastern Washington in 1857 and 1858. The princ.i.p.al incidents in the West were the ma.s.sacre of the whites in 1855 and the attack upon Seattle the following year. In 1857 Col. Steptoe sustained a memorable defeat on the Eastern side of the mountains, and the hostilities were terminated by the complete annihilation of the Indian forces in the same locality the following year by Col. Wright. He killed 1,000 horses and hanged many of the Indians besides the frightful carnage of the battlefield."