Blazing the Way; Or, True Stories, Songs and Sketches of Puget Sound

Many a merry picnic we had in blackberry time, taking our lunch with us and spending the day; sometimes in an Indian canoe we paddled off several miles, to Smith’s Cove or some other likely place.

It was necessary to watch the tide at the Cove or the shore could not be reached across the mudflat.

Once ashore how happy we were; clambering about over the hills, gathering the ripe fruit, now and then turning about to gaze at the snowy sentinel in the southern sky, grand old Mount Rainier.

How wide the sparkling waters of the bay! the sky so pure and clear, the north wind so cool and refreshing. The plumy boughs stirred gently overhead and shed for us the balsamic odors, the flowers waved a welcome at our feet.

In the winter there was seldom any “frost on the rills” or “snow on the hills,” but when it did come the children made haste to get all the possible fun out of the unusual pastime of coasting. Mothers were glad when the Chinook wind came and ate up the snow and brought back the ordinary conditions, as the children were frequently sick during a cold spell.

Now the tenderfoot, as the newcomer is called in the west, is apt to be mistaken about the Chinook wind; there is a wet south wind and a dry south wind on Puget Sound. The Chinook, as the “natives” have known it, is a dry wind, clears the sky, and melts and dries up the snow at once. Wet south wind, carrying heavy rain often follows after snow, and slush reigns for a few days. Perhaps this is a distinction without much difference.

Storms rarely occur, I remember but two violent ones in which the gentle south wind seemed to forget its nature and became a raging gale.

The first occurred when I was a small child. The wind had been blowing for some time, gradually increasing in the evening, and as night advanced becoming heavier every hour. Large stones were taken up from the high bank on the bay and piled on the roof with limbs broken from tough fir trees. Thousands of giant trees fell crashing and groaning to the ground, like a continuous cannonade; the noise was terrific and we feared for our lives.

At midnight, not daring to leave the house, and yet fearing that it might be overthrown, we knelt and commended ourselves to Him who rules the storm.

About one o’clock the storm abated and calmly and safely we lay down to sleep.

The morning broke still and clear, but many a proud monarch of the forest lay prone upon the ground.

Electric storms were very infrequent; if there came a few claps of thunder the children exclaimed, “O mother, hear the thunder storm!”

“Well, children, that isn’t much of a thunder storm; you just ought to hear the thunder in Illinois, and the lighting was a continual blaze.”

Our mother complained that we were scarcely enough afraid of snakes; as there are no deadly reptiles on Puget Sound, we thrust our hands into the densest foliage or searched the thick grass without dread of a lurking enemy.

The common garter snake, a short, thick snake, whose track across the dusty roads I have seen, a long lead-colored snake and a small brown one, comprise the list known to us.

Walking along a narrow trail one summer day, singing as I went, the song was abruptly broken, I sprang to one side with remarkable agility, a long, wiggling thing “swished” through the grass in an opposite direction. Calling for help, I armed myself with a club, and with my support, boldly advanced to seek out the serpent. When discovered we belabored it so earnestly that its head was well-nigh severed from its body.

It was about five feet long, the largest I had even seen, whether poisonous or not is beyond my knowledge.

There are but two spiders known to be dangerous, a white one and a small black “crab” spider. A little girl acquaintance was bitten by one of these, it was supposed, though not positively known; the bite was on the upper arm and produced such serious effects that a large piece of flesh had to be removed by the surgeon’s knife and amputation was narrowly escaped.

A mysterious creature inhabiting Lake Union sometimes poisoned the young bathers. One of my younger brothers was bitten on the knee, and a lameness ensued, which continued for several months. There was only a small puncture visible with a moderate swelling, which finally passed away.

The general immunity from danger extends to the vegetable world, but very few plants are unsafe to handle, chief among them being the Panax horridum or “devil’s club.”

So the happy pioneer children roamed the forest fearlessly and sat on the vines and moss under the great trees, often making bonnets of the shining salal leaves pinned together with rose thorns or tiny twigs, making whistles of alder, which gave forth sweet and pleasant sounds if successfully made; or in the garden making dolls of hollyhocks, mallows and morning glories.

CHAPTER VIII.

MARCHING EXPERIENCES OF ESTHER CHAMBERS

The following thrilling account, written by herself and first published in the “Weekly Ledger” of Tacoma, Washington, of June 3, 1892, is to be highly commended for its clear and forcible style:

“My father, William Packwood, left Missouri in the spring of 1844 with my mother and four children in an ox team to cross the plains to Oregon.

“My mother’s health was very poor when we started. She had to be helped in and out of the wagon, but the change by traveling improved her health so much that she gained a little every day, and in the course of a month or six weeks she was able to get up in the morning and cook breakfast, while my father attended his team and did other chores. I had one sister older than myself, and I was only six years old. My little sister and baby brother, who learned to walk by rolling the water keg as we camped nights and mornings, were of no help to my sick mother.

“The company in which we started was Captain Gilliam’s and we traveled quite a way when we joined Captain Ford’s company, making upward of sixty wagons in all.

“Our company was so large that the Indians did not molest us, although we, after letting our stock feed until late in the evening, had formed a large corral of the wagons, in which we drove the cattle and horses, and stood guard at night, as the Indians had troubled small companies by driving off their stock, but they were not at all hostile to us.

“We came to a river and camped. The next morning we were visited by Indians, who seemed to want to see us children, so we were terribly afraid of the Indians, and, as father drove in the river to cross, the oxen got frightened at the Indians and tipped the wagon over, and father jumped and held the wagon until help came. We thought the Indians would catch us, so we jumped to the lower part of the box, where there was about six inches of water. The swim and fright I will never forget – the Indian fright, of course.

“I was quite small but I do remember the beautiful scenery. We could see antelope, deer, rabbits, sage hens and coyotes, etc., and in the camp we children had a general good time. All joined at night in the plays. One night Mr. Jenkins’ boys told me to ask their father for his sheath knife to cut some sticks with. When using it on the first stick, I cut my lefthand forefinger nail and all off, except a small portion of the top of my finger, and the scar is still visible.

“On another evening we children were having a nice time, when a boy by the name of Stephen, who had been in the habit of hugging around the children’s shoulders and biting them, hugged me and bit a piece almost out of my shoulder. This was the first time I remember seeing my father’s wrath rise on the plains, as he was a very even-tempered man. He said to the offending boy, ‘If you do that again, I shall surely whip you.’

“A few days later we came to a stream that was deep but narrow. Mr. Stephens, this boy’s father, was leading a cow by a rope tied around his waist and around the cow’s head for the purpose of teaching the rest of the cattle to swim. The current being very swift, washed the cow down the stream, dragging the man. The women and children were all crying at a great rate, when one of the party went to Mrs. Stephens, saying, ‘Mr. Stephens is drowning.’ ‘Well,’ she replied, ‘there is plenty of more men where he came from.’ Mr. Stephens, his cow and all lodged safely on a drift. They got him out safely, but he did not try to swim a stream with a cow tied to his waist again.

“We could see the plains covered with buffalo as we traveled along, just like the cattle of our plains are here.

“One day a band of buffalo came running toward us, and one jumped between the wheel cattle and the wheels of the wagon, and we came very near having a general stampede of the cattle; so when the teamsters got their teams quieted down, the men, gathering their guns, ran and killed three of the buffalo, and all of the company were furnished with dried beef, which was fine for camping.

“We came to a place where there was a boiling spring that would cook eggs, and a short distance from this was a cold, clear spring, and a short distance from this was a heap of what looked like ashes, and when we crossed it the cattles’ feet burned until they bawled. Another great sight I remember of seeing was an oil spring.

“Then we reached the Blue Mountains. Snow fell as we traveled through them.

“We then came down in the Grande Ronde valley, and it seemed as if we had reached a paradise. It was a beautiful valley. Here Indians came to trade us dried salmon, la camas cakes and dried crickette cakes. We traded for some salmon and the la camas cakes, but the crickette cakes we did not hanker after.

“A man in one train thought he would fool an Indian chief, so he told the Indian he would swap his girl sixteen years old, for a couple of horses. The bargain was made and he took the horses, and the Indian hung around until near night. When the captain of the company found out that the Indian was waiting for his girl to go with him, the captain told the man that we might all be killed through him, and made him give up the horses to the chief. The Indian chief was real mad as he took the horses away.

“We went on down to The Dalles, where we stopped a few days. There was a mission at The Dalles where two missionaries lived, Brewer and Waller. We emigrants traded some of our poor, tired cattle off to them for some of their fat beef, and some coarse flour chopped on a hand mill, like what we call chop-feed nowadays.

“Then we had to make a portage around the falls, and the women and children walked. I don’t remember the distance, but we walked until late at night, and waded in the mud knee-deep, and my mother stumped her toe and fell against a log or she might have gone down into the river. We little tots fell down in the mud until you’d have thought we were pigs.

“The men drove around the falls another way, and got out of provisions.

“My father, seeing a boat from the high bluffs, going down to the river hailed it, and when he came down to the boat he found us. He said he had gotten so hungry that he killed a crow and ate it, and thought it tasted splendid. He took provisions to the cattle drivers and we came on down the river to Fort Vancouver. It rained on us for a week and our bedclothes were drenched through and through, so at night we would open our bed of wet clothes and cuddle in them as though we were in a palace car, and all kept well and were not sick a day in all of our six months’ journey crossing the plains. My mother gained and grew fleshy and strong.

“Next we arrived in what is now the city of Portland, which then consisted of a log cabin and a few shanties. We stayed there a few days to dry our bedding.

“Then we moved out to the Tualatin Plains, where we wintered in a barn, with three other families, each family having a corner of the barn, with fire in the center and a hole in the roof for the smoke to go out. My father went to work for a man by the name of Baxton, as all my father was worth in money, I think, was twenty-five cents, or something like that. He arrived with a cow, calf and three oxen, and had to support his family by mauling rails in the rain, to earn the wheat, peas and potatoes we ate, as that was all we could get, as bread was out of the question. Shortly after father had gone to work my little brother had a rising on his cheek. It made him so sick that mother wanted us little tots to go to the place where my father was working. It being dark, we got out of our way and went to a man, who had an Indian woman, by the name of Williams. In the plains there are swales that fill up with water when the heavy rains come, and they are knee deep. I fell in one of these, but we got to Mr. Williams all right. But when we found our neighbor we began crying, so Mr. Williams persuaded us to come in and he would go and get father, which he did, and father came home with us to our barn house. My little brother got better, and my father returned to his work again.

“Among the settlers on the Tualatin Plains were Mr. Lackriss, Mr. Burton, Mr. Williams and General McCarver, who had settled on farms before we came, and many a time did we go to their farms for greens and turnips, which were something new and a great treat to us.

“Often the Indians used to frighten us with their war dances, as we called them, as we did not know the nature of Indians, so, as General McCarver was used to them, we often asked him if the Indians were having a war dance for the purpose of hostility. He told us, that was the way they doctored their sick.

“General McCarver settled in Tacoma when the townsite was first laid out and is well known. He died in Tacoma, leaving a family.

“After we moved out to the Tualatin Plains, many a night when father was away we lay awake listening to the dogs barking, thinking the Indians were coming to kill us, and when father came home I felt safe and slept happily.

“In the spring of 1845 my father took a nice place in West Yamhill, about two miles from the Willamette River and we had some settlers around, but our advantage for a school was poor, as we were too far from settlers to have a school, so my education, what little I have, was gotten by punching the cedar fire and studying at night, but, however, we were a happy family, hoping to accumulate a competency in our new home.

“One dog, myself and elder sister and brother were carrying water from our spring, which was a hundred yards or more from our house, when a number of Indians came along. We were afraid of them and all hid. I hid by the trail, when an old Indian, seeing me, yelled out, ‘Adeda!’ and I began to laugh, but my sister was terribly frightened and yelled at me to hide, so they found all of us, but they were friendly to us, only a wretched lot to steal, as they stole the only cow we had brought through, leaving the calf with us without milk.