Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail Part 15

[Ill.u.s.tration: The blockhouse, a haven of safety.]

The war was brought on by the fact that the Indians had been wronged.

This seems certain. They had been robbed of their lands, by the treaties made in 1854, and there had been atrocious murders of Indians by irresponsible white men. The result was suffering and trouble for all of us.

The war brought troops, many of whom were reckless men; the army then was not up to the standard of today. Besides, there came in the wake of the soldiers a trail of gamblers and other disreputable people to vex and perplex us. In the blockhouses could be seen bullet marks which we knew did not come from Indians.

I remember a little drummer boy, known as Scotty, who used frequently to come over to our home. He was a bright little fellow, and the Colonel, finding it was agreeable to us, encouraged him to make these visits, perhaps to get him away a little from the rough life of the post. Scotty had been living with a soldier there who, as report had it, used to get drunk and beat his wife. When my wife asked Scotty one day if the soldier abused his wife, he replied, "Well, I can't say exactly that he abuses her. He only cuffs and kicks her around the house sometimes."

Poor boy! he had seen so much rough living that he didn't know what abuse meant.

Not all the soldiers were of this drunken cast, of course. Many brave and n.o.ble men were among the military forces. The Indians, naturally, did not discriminate between good and bad soldiers. They hated and fought the troops, while at the same time they would often protect the pioneers, with whom they had been generally friendly.

I had lived in peace with these Indians and they had gained my confidence. As events subsequently showed, I held their friendship and confidence. At one time, during the war, a party of Indians held me harmless within their power. They had said they would not harm those who had advocated their cause at the time the treaties were made.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The lost child.]

Soon after the outbreak noted, I disregarded the earnest entreaties of many persons and went back to my stock and to the cabin to care for the abandoned dairy and young cattle.

I did not believe the Indians would molest me, but took the precaution of having my rifle in a convenient place. I did not need to use it. When nightfall came I did withdraw from my cabin, not from fear of war parties, but of individual outlaws.

The sole military experience of my life consisted in an expedition to the Puyallup valley with a company of seventeen settlers soon after the outbreak described. The settlers of Puyallup had left their homes the day after the ma.s.sacre in such haste that they were almost dest.i.tute of clothing, bedding, and food, as well as shelter. A strong military force had penetrated the Indian country--the upper Puyallup valley and beyond.

We knew of this, but did not know that the soldiers had retreated by another road, virtually driven out, the very day we went in armed with all sorts of guns and with scarcely any organization.

We had gone into the Indian stronghold not to fight Indians, but to recover property. Nevertheless, there would have been hot work if we had been attacked. The settlers knew the country as well as did the Indians and were prepared to meet them on their own ground and in their own way.

The Indians were in great force but a few miles distant. They had scouts on our tracks, but did not molest us. We visited every settler's cabin and secured the belongings not destroyed. On the sixth day we came away with great loads of "plunder." All the while we were in blissful ignorance that the troops had been withdrawn, and that no protection lay between us and the Indian forces.

After this outbreak, Indians and settlers about our neighborhood lived in peace, on the whole. To anyone who treated them fairly, the Indians became loyal friends.

Mowich Man, an Indian whom I was to know during many years, was one of our neighbors. He frequently pa.s.sed our cabin with his canoe and people. He was a great hunter, a crack shot, and an all-round Indian of good parts. Many is the saddle of venison that he brought me in the course of years. Other pioneers likewise had special friends among the Indians.

Some of Mowich Man's people were fine singers. His camp, or his canoe if he was traveling, was always the center for song and merriment. It is a curious fact that one seldom can get the Indian music by asking for it, but rather must wait for its spontaneous outburst. Indian songs in those days came from nearly every nook and corner and seemed to pervade the whole country. We often could hear the songs and accompanying stroke of the paddle long before we saw the floating canoes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Carrying a dairy to the new mining town.]

CHAPTER NINETEEN

THE STAMPEDE FOR THE GOLD DIGGINGS

HARDLY had we got fairly over the Indian War when another wave of excitement broke up our pioneer plans again. On March 21, 1858, the schooner _Wild Pigeon_ arrived at Steilacoom with the news that the Indians had discovered gold on Fraser River, that they had traded several pounds of the precious metal with the Hudson's Bay Company, and that three hundred people had left Victoria and its vicinity for the new land of El Dorado. Furthermore, the report ran, the mines were exceedingly rich.

The wave of excitement that went through the little settlement upon the receipt of this news was repeated in every town and hamlet of the whole Pacific Coast. It continued even around the world, summoning adventurous spirits from all civilized countries of the earth.

Everybody, women folk and all, wanted to go, and would have started pell mell had there not been that restraining influence of the second thought, especially powerful with people who had just gone through the mill of adversity. My family was still in the blockhouse that we had built in the town of Steilacoom during the Indian War. Our cattle were peacefully grazing on the plains a few miles away.

One of the local merchants, Samuel McCaw, bundled up a few goods, made a flying trip up Fraser River, and came back with fifty ounces of gold dust and the news that the mines were all that had been reported and more, too. This of course, added fuel to the flame. We all believed a new era had dawned upon us, similar to that of ten years before in California, which changed the world's history. High hopes were built, most of them to end in disappointment.

Not but that there were extensive mines, and that they were rich, and that they were easily worked; how to get to them was the puzzling question. The early voyagers had slipped up the Fraser before the freshets came down from the melting snows to swell the torrents of that river. Those going later either failed altogether and gave up the unequal contest, or lost an average of one canoe or boat out of three in the persistent attempt. How many lives were lost never will be known.

Contingents began to arrive in Steilacoom from Oregon, from California, and finally from "the States." Steamers great and small began to appear, with little cargo but with pa.s.senger lists that were said to be nothing compared to those of ships coming in less than a hundred miles to the north of us. These people landing in Whatcom in such great numbers must be fed, we agreed. If the mult.i.tude would not come to us to drink the milk of our cows and eat their b.u.t.ter, what better could we do than to take our cows to the place where we were told the mult.i.tude did not hesitate to pay a dollar a gallon for milk and any price one might ask for fresh b.u.t.ter!

But how to get even to Whatcom was the rub. All s.p.a.ce on the steamers was taken from week to week for freight and pa.s.sengers, and no room was left for cattle. In fact, the run on provisions for the gold rush was so great that at one time we were almost threatened with famine. Finally our cattle, mostly cows, were loaded in an open scow and taken in tow alongside the steamer, the _Sea Bird_, I think it was.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A "shaker" used to wash out gold.]

All went well enough until we arrived off the head of Whidby Island.

Here a choppy sea from a light wind began slopping over the scow and evidently would sink us despite our utmost efforts at bailing. When the captain would slow down the speed of his steamer, all was well; but the moment greater power was applied, over the gunwales would come the water.

The dialogue that ensued between the captain and me was more emphatic than elegant. He dared not risk letting go of us, however, or of running us under, for fear of incurring the risk of heavy damages. I would not consent to be landed. So about the twentieth of June we were set adrift in Bellingham Bay and, tired and sleepy, landed on the beach.

Our cows must have feed, they must be milked, the milk must be marketed.

There was no rest for us during another thirty-six hours. In fact, there was but little sleep for anybody on that beach at the time. Several ocean steamers had just dumped three thousand people on the beach, and there was still a scramble to find a place to build a house or stretch a tent, or even to spread a blanket, for there were great numbers already there, landed by previous steamers. The staking of lots on the tide flats at night, when the tide was out, seemed to be a staple industry.

A few days after my arrival four steamers came with an aggregate of more than two thousand pa.s.sengers. Many of these, however, did not leave the steamer; they took pa.s.sage either to their port of departure--San Francisco or Victoria--or to points on the Sound. The ebb tide had set in, and although many steamers came later and landed pa.s.sengers, their return lists soon became large and the population began to diminish.

Taking my little dory that we had with us on the scow, I rowed to the largest steamer lying at anchor. So many small boats surrounded the steamer that I could not get within a hundred feet of it. All sorts of craft filled the intervening s.p.a.ce, from the smallest Indian canoe to large barges, the owner of each craft striving to secure customers.

The great difficulty was to find a trail to the gold fields. This pa.s.s and that pa.s.s was tried without success. I saw sixty men with heavy packs on their backs start out in one company. Every one of these had to come back after floundering in the mountains for weeks. The Indians, among whom the spirit of war still smouldered, headed off some of the parties. The snows kept back others; and finally the British, watching their own interests, blocked the way through their land. As a result the boom burst, and people resought their old homes.

It is doubtful if another stampede of such dimensions as that to the Fraser in 1858 ever occurred where the suffering was so great, the prizes so few, and the loss of life proportionately so great. Probably not one in ten that made the effort reached the mines, and of those who did the usual percentage drew the blanks inevitable in such stampedes.

And yet the mines were immensely rich; many millions of dollars of gold came from the find in the lapse of years, and gold is still coming, though now more than sixty years have pa.s.sed.

While the losses of the people of the Puget Sound country were great, nevertheless good came out of the great stampede in the large accession of population that remained after the return tide was over. Many people had become stranded and could not leave the country, but went to work with a will to make a living there. Of these not a few are still honored citizens of the state that has been carved out of the territory of that day.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Carrie sees "a big cat" sharpening its claws.]

CHAPTER TWENTY

MAKING A PERMANENT HOME IN THE WILDS

THE days that followed our venture in the gold field were more peaceful and prosperous. Soon after the Indian War we had moved to a new claim.

We began now to realize to the full our dream of earlier days, to settle on a farm and build a home.