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

“‘My early education began in the log schoolhouse so familiar to the early settler in the West. The teachers were paid by subscription, so much per pupil, and the schools rarely lasted more than half the year, and often but three months. Among the earliest of my recollections is of my father hewing out a farm in the beech woods of Indiana, and I well remember that the first school that I attended was two and a half miles from my home. When I became older it was often necessary for me to attend to home duties half of the day before going to school a mile distant. By close application I was able to keep up with my class.

“‘My opportunities to some extent improved as time advanced. I spent my vacations with an older brother at carpenter and joiner work to obtain the means to pay my expenses during term time.’”

A. A. Denny was married November 23, 1843, to Mary Ann Boren, to whom he has paid a graceful and well-deserved tribute in these words:

“She has been kind and indulgent to all my faults, and in cases of doubt and difficulty in the long voyage we have made together she has always been, without the least disposition to dictate, a safe and prudent adviser.”

He held many public offices, each and all of which he filled with scrupulous care, from county supervisor in Illinois in 1843 to first postmaster of Seattle in 1853. He was elected to the legislature of Washington Territory, serving for nine consecutive sessions, being the speaker of the third; was registrar of the U. S. Land Office at Olympia from 1861 to 1865. He was a member of the Thirty-ninth Congress, being a delegate from Washington Territory. Even in his age he was given the unanimous vote of the Republicans for U. S. Senator from the State of Washington.

His business enterprises date from the founding of the City of Seattle and are interwoven with its history.

He was a volunteer in the war against the Indians and had some stirring experiences. In his book, “Pioneer Days on Puget Sound,” he gives a very clear and accurate account of the beginning of the trouble with the Indians and many facts concerning the war following.

He found, as many others did, good and true friends, as well as enemies, among the Indians. On page 68 of the work mentioned may be found these words: “I will say further, that my acquaintance and experience with the Puget Sound Indians proved them to be sincere in their friendship, and no more unfaithful and treasonable than the average white man, and I am disposed to believe that the same might be truthfully said of many other Indians.”

With regard to the dissatisfied tenderfoot he says: “All old settlers know that it is a common occurrence for parties who have reached here by the easy method of steamer or railway in a palace car to be most blindly unreasonable in their fault-finding, and they are often not content with abusing the country and climate, but they heap curses and abuse on those who came before them by the good old method of ninety or a hundred days crossing the plains, just as though we had sent for them and thus given them an undoubted right to abuse us for their lack of good strong sense. Then we all know, too, that it as been a common occurrence for those same fault-finders to leave, declaring that the country was not fit for civilized people to live in; and not by any means unusual for the same parties to return after a short time ready to settle down and commence praising the country, as though they wanted to make amends for their unreasonable behavior in the first instance.”

There are a good many other pithy remarks in this book, forcible for their truth and simplicity.

As the stories of adventure have an imperishable fascination, I give his own account of the discovery of Shilshole or Salmon Bay:

“When we selected our claims we had fears that the range for our stock would not afford them sufficient feed in the winter, and it was not possible to provide feed for them, which caused us a great deal of anxiety. From statements made by the Indians, which we could then but imperfectly understand, we were led to believe that there was prairie or grass lands to the northwest, where we might find feed in case of necessity, but we were too busy to explore until in December, 1852, when Bell, my brother, D. T. Denny, and myself determined to look for the prairie. It was slow and laborious traveling through the unbroken forest, and before we had gone far Bell gave out and returned home, leaving us to proceed alone. In the afternoon we unexpectedly came to a body of water, and at first thought we had inclined too far eastward and struck the lake, but on examination we found it to be tidewater. From our point of observation we could not see the outlet to the Sound, and our anxiety to learn more about it caused us to spend so much time that when we turned homeward it soon became so dark that we were compelled to camp for the night without dinner, supper or blankets, and we came near being without fire also, as it had rained on us nearly all day and wet our matches so that we could only get fire by the flash of a rifle, which was exceedingly difficult under the circumstances.”

D. T. Denny remembers that A. A. Denny pulled some of the cotton wadding out of his coat and then dug into a dead fir tree that was dry inside and put it in with what other dry stuff they could find, which was very little, and D. T. Denny fired off his gun into it with the muzzle so close as to set fire to it.

He also relates that he shot a pheasant and broiled it before the fire, dividing it in halves.

A. A. Denny further says:

“Our camp was about midway between the mouth of the bay and the cove, and in the morning we made our way to the cove and took the beach for home. Of course, our failing to return at night caused great anxiety at home, and soon after we got on the beach we met Bell coming on hunt of us, and the thing of most interest to us just then was he had his pockets filled with hard bread.

“This was our first knowledge of Shilshole Bay, which, we soon after fully explored, and were ready to point newcomers in that direction for locations.”

Old Salmon Bay Curley had told them there was grass in that region, which was true they afterward learned, but not prairie grass, it was salt marsh, in sufficient quantity to sustain the cattle.

Speaking of the Indians, he tells how they settled around the cabins of the whites at Alki until there were perhaps a thousand, and relates this incident: “On one occasion during the winter, Nelson (Chief Pialse) came with a party of Green River and Muckilshoot Indians, and got into an altercation with John Kanem and the Snoqualmies. They met and the opposing forces, amounting to thirty or forty on a side, drew up directly in front of Low’s house, armed with Hudson Bay muskets, the two parties near enough together to have powder-burnt each other, and were apparently in the act of opening fire, when we interposed and restored peace without bloodshed, by my taking John Kanem away and keeping them apart until Nelson and his party left.”

His daughter, Lenora Denny, related the same incident to me. She witnessed it as a little child and remembers it perfectly, together with her fright at the preparations for battle, and added that Kanem desired her father at their conference behind the cabin just to let him go around behind the enemy’s line of battle and stab their chief; nobody would know who did it and that would be sufficient in lieu of the proposed fight. Mr. Denny dissuaded him and the “war” terminated as above stated.

In the fall of 1855, the Indians exhibited more and more hostility toward the whites, and narrow escapes were not uncommon before the war fairly broke out.

About this time as A. A. Denny was making a canoe voyage from Olympia down the Sound he met with a thrilling experience.

When he and his two Indian canoemen were opposite a camp of savages on the beach, they were hailed by the latter with:

“Who is it you have in the canoe and where are you going?” spoken in their native tongue. After calling back and forth for some little time, two of them put out hastily in a canoe to overtake the travelers, keeping up an earnest and excited argument with one of Mr. Denny’s Indians, both of whom he observed never ceased paddling. One of the strangers was dressed up in war-paint and had a gun across his lap; he kept up the angry debate with one of the travelers while the other was perfectly silent.

Finally the pursuers were near enough so that one reached out to catch hold of the canoe when Denny’s men paddled quickly out of reach and increased their speed to a furious rate, continuing to paddle with all their might until a long distance from their threatening visitors. Although Mr. Denny did not understand their speech, their voices and gestures were not difficult to interpret; he felt they wished to kill him and thought himself lost.

He afterward learned that his canoeman, who had answered the attacking party, had saved his life by his courage and cunning. The savages from the camp had demanded that Mr. Denny be given up to them that they might kill him in revenge for the killing of some Indians, saying he was a “hyas tyee” (great man) and a most suitable subject for their satisfaction.

He had answered that Mr. Denny was not near so high up nor as great as some others and was always a good friend of the Indians and then carried him to a place of safety by fast and furious paddling. The one who was silent during the colloquy declared afterward that he said nothing for fear they would kill him too.

This exhibition of faithfulness on the part of Indian hirelings is worthy of note in the face of many accusations of treachery on the part of their race.

It is my opinion that Arthur Armstrong Denny led an exemplary life and that he ever desired to do justice to others. If he failed in doing so, it was the fault of those with whom he was associated rather than his own.

A leading trait in his character was integrity, another was the modesty that ever accompanies true greatness, noticeable also in his well known younger brother, D. T. Denny; neither has been boastful, arrogant or grasping for public honors.

A. A. Denny fought the long battle of the pioneer faithfully and well and sleeps in an honored grave.

MARY A. DENNY

Mary Ann Boren (Denny) was born in Tennessee, November 25th, 1822, the first child of Richard Boren and Sarah Latimer Boren (afterward Denny). Her grandfather Latimer, a kind hearted, sympathetic man, sent a bottle of camphor to revive the pale young mother. This camphor bottle was kept in the family, the children resorting to it for the palliation of cuts and bruises throughout their adolescence, and it is now preserved by her own family as a cherished relic, having seen eighty years and more since its presentation.

After the death of her father, leaving her mother a young widow with three small children, they lived in Illinois as pioneers, where Mary shared the toils, dangers and vicissitudes of frontier life. Was not this the school for the greater pioneering of the farthest west?

November 23rd, 1843, she married Arthur A. Denny, a man who both recognized and acknowledged her worth.

When she crossed the plains in 1851 with the Denny company, Mrs. Denny was a young matron of twenty-nine years, with two little daughters. The journey, arduous to any, was peculiarly trying to her with the helpless ones to care for and make as comfortable as such tenting in the wilds might be.

At Fort Laramie her own feet were so uncomfortable in shoes that she put on a pair of moccasins which David T. Denny had bought of an Indian and worn for one day. Mrs. Denny wore them during the remainder of the journey to Portland.

One incident among many serves to show her unfaltering courage; an Indian reached into her wagon to take the gun hung up inside: Mrs. Mary A. Denny pluckily seized a hatchet and drew it to strike a vigorous blow when the savage suddenly withdrew, doubtless with an increased respect for white squaws in general and this one in particular.

The great journey ended, at Portland her third child, Rolland H., was born. If motherhood be a trial under the most favorable circumstances, what must it have been on the long march?

On the stormy and dangerous trip from Portland on the schooner Exact, out over the bar and around Cape Flattery to the landing at Alki Point, went the little band with this brave mother and her babe.

On a drizzly day in November, the 13th, 1851, she climbed the bank at Alki Point to the rude cabin, bare of everything now considered necessary to begin housekeeping. They were imperfectly protected from the elements and the eldest child, Catharine, or Kate as she was called, yet remembers how the rain dropped on her face the first night they slept in the unfinished cabin, giving her a decided prejudice against camping out.

The mother’s health was poor and it became necessary to provide nourishment for the infant; as there were no cows within reach, or tinned substitutes, the experiment of feeding him on clam juice was made with good effect.

Louisa Boren Denny, her sister, then unmarried, relates the following incident:

“At Alki Point one day, I stood just within the door of the cabin and Mary stood just inside; both of us saw an Indian bob up from behind the bank and point his gun directly at my sister Mary and almost immediately lower it without firing.”

Mary A. Denny, when asked recently what she thought might have been his reason for doing so replied, “Well, I don’t know, unless it was just to show what he could do; it was Indian Jim; I suppose he did it to show that he could shoot me if he wanted to.”

Probably he thought to frighten her at least, but with the customary nerve of the pioneer woman, she exhibited no sign of fear and he went his way.

They afterward learned that on the same evening there had been some trouble with the Indians at the Maple Place and it was thought that this Indian was one of the disaffected or a sympathizer.

Mrs. Mary A. Denny moved about from place to place, living first in the cabin at Alki Point, then a cabin on Elliott Bay, on the north end of their claim, then another cabin near the great laurel tree, on the site of the Stevens Hotel, Seattle. After a time the family went to Olympia. Her husband was in the Land Office, was a member of the Territorial Legislature and Delegate to Congress; all the while she toiled on in her home with her growing family.

They returned to Seattle and built what was for those times a very good residence on the corner of Pike Street and First Avenue, where they had a fine orchard, and there they lived many years.

After having struggled through long years of poverty, not extreme, to be sure, but requiring much patient toil and endurance, their property became immensely valuable and they enjoyed well deserved affluence.