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

Swifter and more turbulent, the rushing flood began to break in more furious foam-wreaths on every jagged rock, impotently striving to stay its onward rush to the limitless ocean.

Sufficient light enabled the observing eye to perceive the writhing surface of the angry waters, but the boatmen were stupified with drink!

All day long they had passed a bottle about which contained a liquid facetiously called “Blue Ruin” and near enough their ruin it proved.

I have penned the following description which met with the approval of one of the principal actors in what so nearly proved a tragedy:

It was midnight on the mighty Columbia. A waning moon cast a glowworm light on the dark, rushing river; all but one of the weary women and tired little children were deeply sunken in sleep. The oars creaked and dipped monotonously; the river sang louder and louder every boat’s length. Drunken, bloated faces leered foolishly and idiotically; they admonished each other to “Keep ’er goin’.”

The solitary watcher stirred uneasily, looked at the long lines of foam out in midstream and saw how fiercely the white waves contended, and far swifter flew the waters than at any hour before. What was the meaning of it? Hark! that humming, buzzing, hissing, nay, bellowing roar! The blood flew to her brain and made her senses reel; they must be nearing the last landing above the falls, the great Cascades of the Columbia.

But the crew gave no heed.

Suddenly she cried out sharply to her sleeping sister, “Mary! Mary! wake up! we are nearing the falls, I hear them roar.”

“What is it, Liza?” she said sleepily.

“O, wake up! we shall all be drowned, the men don’t know what they are doing.”

The rudely awakened sleepers seemed dazed and did not make much outcry, but a strong young figure climbed over the mass of baggage and confronting the drunken boatmen, plead, urged and besought them, if they considered their own lives, or their helpless freight of humanity, to make for the shore.

“Oh, men,” she pleaded, “don’t you hear the falls, they roar louder now. It will soon be too late, I beseech you turn the boat to shore. Look at the rapids beyond us!”

“Thar haint no danger, Miss, leastways not yet; wots all this fuss about anyhow? No danger,” answered one who was a little disturbed; the others were almost too much stupified to understand her words and stood staring at the bareheaded, black haired young woman as if she were an apparition and were no more alarmed than if the warning were given as a curious mechanical performance, having no reference to themselves.

Repeating her request with greater earnestness, if possible, a man’s voice broke in saying, “I believe she is right, put in men quick, none of us want to be drowned.”

Fortunately this penetrated their besotted minds and they put about in time to save the lives of all on board, although they landed some distance below the usual place.

A little farther and they would have been past all human help.

One of the boatmen cheerfully acknowledged the next day that if it “hadn’t been fur that purty girl they had a’ gone over them falls, shure.”

The other boat had a similar experience; it began to leak profusely before they had gone very far and would soon have sunk, had not the crew, who doubtless were sober, made all haste to land.

My grandmother has often related to me how she clapsed her little child to her heart and resigned herself to a fate which seemed inevitable; also of a Mrs. McCarthy, a passenger likewise, becoming greatly excited and alternately swearing and praying until the danger was past. An inconvenient but amusing feature was the soaked condition of the “plunder” and the way the shore and shrubbery thereon were decorated with “hiyu ictas,” as the Chinook has it, hung out to dry. Finding it impossible to proceed, this detachment returned and took the mountain road.

A tramway built by F. A. Chenoweth, around the great falls, afforded transportation for the baggage of the narrowly saved first described. There being no accommodations for passengers, the party walked the tramroad; at the terminus they unloaded and stayed all night. No “commodious and elegant” steamer awaited them, but an old brig, bound for Portland, received them and their effects.

Such variety of adventure had but recently crowded upon them that it was almost fearfully they re-embarked. A. A. Denny observed to Captain Low, “Look here, Low, they say women are scarce in Oregon and we had better be careful of ours.” Presumably they were, as both survive at the present day.

From a proud ranger of the dashing main, the old brig had come down to be a carrier of salt salmon packed in barrels, and plunder of immigrants; as for the luckless passengers, they accommodated themselves as best they could.

The small children were tied to the mast to keep them from falling overboard, as there were no bulwarks.

Beds were made below on the barrels before mentioned and the travel-worn lay down, but not to rest; the mosquitos were a bloodthirsty throng and the beds were likened unto a corduroy road.

One of the women grumbled a little and an investigation proved that it was, as her husband said, “Nothing but the tea-kettle” wedged in between the barrels.

Another lost a moccasin overboard and having worn out all her shoes on the way, went with one stockinged foot until they turned up the Willamette River, then went ashore to a farmhouse where she was so fortunate as to find the owner of a new pair of shoes which she bought, and was thus able to enter the “city” of Portland in appropriate footgear.

After such vicissitudes, dangers and anxiety, the little company were glad to tarry in the embryo metropolis for a brief season; then, having heard of fairer shores, the restless pioneers moved on.

CHAPTER III

THE SETTLEMENT AT ALKI

Midway between Port Townsend and Olympia, in full view looking west from the city of Seattle, is a long tongue of land, washed by the sparkling waves of Puget Sound, called Alki Point. It helps to make Elliott Bay a beautiful land-locked harbor and is regarded with interest as being the site of the first settlement by white people in King County in what was then the Territory of Oregon. Alki is an Indian word pronounced with the accent on the first syllable, which is al as in altitude; ki is spoken as ky in silky. Alki means “by and by.”

It doth truly fret the soul of the old settler to see it printed and hear it pronounced Al-ki.

The first movement toward its occupancy was on this wise: A small detachment of the advancing column of settlers, D. T. Denny and J. N. Low, left Portland on the Willamette, on the 10th of September, 1851, with two horses carrying provisions and camp outfit.

These men walked to the Columbia River to round up a band of cattle belonging to Low. The cattle were ferried over the river at Vancouver and from thence driven over the old Hudson Bay Company’s trail to the mouth of Cowlitz River, a tributary of the Columbia, up the Cowlitz to Warbass Landing and on to Ford’s prairie, a wide and rich one, where the band were left to graze on the luxuriant pasturage.

On a steep, rocky trail along the Cowlitz River, Denny was following along not far behind a big, yellow ox that was scrambling up, trying vainly to get a firm foothold, when Low, foreseeing calamity, called to him to “Look out!” Denny swerved a little from the path and at that moment the animal lost its footing and came tumbling past them, rolling over several times until it landed on a lower level, breaking off one of its horns. Here was a narrow escape although not from a wild beast. They could not then stop to secure the animal although it was restored to the flock some time after.

From Ford’s prairie, although footsore and weary, they kept on their way until Olympia was reached. It was a long tramp of perhaps two hundred fifty miles, the exact distance could not be ascertained as the trail was very winding.

As described by one of our earliest historians, Olympia then consisted of about a dozen one-story frame cabins, covered with split cedar siding, well ventilated and healthy, and perhaps twice as many Indian huts near the custom house, as Olympia was then the port of entry for Puget Sound.

The last mentioned structure afforded space on the ground floor for a store, with a small room partitioned off for a postoffice.

Our two pioneers found here Lee Terry, who had been engaged in loading a sailing vessel with piles. He fell in with the two persistent pedestrians and thus formed a triumvirate of conquerors of a new world. The pioneers tarried not in the embryo city but pushed on farther down the great Inland Sea.

With Captain Fay and several others they embarked in an open boat, the Captain, who owned the boat, intending to purchase salmon of the Indians for the San Francisco market. Fay was an old whaling captain. He afterwards married Mrs. Alexander, a widow of Whidby Island, and lived there until his death.

The little party spent their first night on the untrod shores of Sgwudux, the Indian name of the promontory now occupied by West Seattle, landing on the afternoon of September 25th, 1851, and sleeping that night under the protecting boughs of a giant cedar tree.

On the 26th, Low, Denny and Terry hired two young Indians of Chief Sealth’s (Seattle’s) tillicum (people), who were camped near by, to take them up the Duwampsh River in a canoe. Safely seated, the paddles dipped and away they sped over the dancing waves. The weather was fair, the air clear and a magnificent panorama spread around them. The whole forest-clad encircling shores of Elliott Bay, untouched by fire or ax, the tall evergreens thickly set in a dense mass to the water’s edge stood on every hand. The great white dome of Mount Rainier, 14,444 feet high, before them, toward which they traveled; behind them, stretched along the western horizon, Towiat or Olympics, a grand range of snow-capped mountains whose foothills were covered with a continuous forest.

Entering the Duwampsh River and ascending for several miles they reached the farther margin of a prairie where Low and Terry, having landed, set out over an Indian trail through the woods, to look at the country, while Denny followed on the river with the Indians. On and on they went until Denny became anxious and fired off his gun but received neither shot nor shout in answer. The day waned, it was growing dark, and as he returned the narrow deep river took on a melancholy aspect, the great forest was gloomy with unknown fears, and he was alone with strange, wild men whose language was almost unintelligible. Nevertheless, he landed and camped with them at a place known afterward as the Maple Prairie.

Morning of the 27th of September saw them paddling up the river again in search of the other two explorers, whom they met coming down in a canoe. They had kept on the trail until an Indian camp was reached at the junction of Black and Duwampsh Rivers the night before. All returned to Sgwudux, their starting point, to sleep under the cedar tree another night.

On the evening of the 27th a scow appeared and stopped near shore where the water was quite deep. Two women on board conversed with Captain Fay in Chinook, evidently quite proud of their knowledge of the trade jargon of the Northwest. The scow moved on up Elliott Bay, entered Duwampsh River and ascended it to the claim of L. M. Collins, where another settlement sprang into existence.

On the 28th the pioneers moved their camp to Alki Point or Sma-qua-mox as it was named by the Indians.

Captain Fay returned from down the Sound on the forenoon of the 28th. That night, as they sat around the campfire, the pioneers talked of their projected building and the idea of split stuff was advanced, when Captain Fay remarked, “Well, I think a log house is better in an Indian country.”

“Why, do you think there is any danger from the Indians?” he was quickly asked.

“Well,” he replied, with a sly twinkle in his eye, “It would keep off the stray bullets when they poo mowich” (shoot deer).

These hints, coupled with subsequent experiences, awoke the anxiety of D. T. Denny, who soon saw that there were swarms of savages to the northward. Those near by were friendly, but what of those farther away?

One foggy morning, when the distance was veiled in obscurity, the two young white men, Lee and David, were startled to see a big canoe full of wild Indians from away down the Sound thrust right out of the dense fog; they landed and came ashore; the chief was a tall, brawny fellow with a black beard. They were very impudent, crowding on them and trying to get into the little brush tent, but Lee Terry stood in the door-way leaning, or braced rather, against the tree upon which one end of the frail habitation was fastened. The white men succeeded in avoiding trouble but they felt inwardly rather “shaky” and were much relieved when their rude visitors departed. These Indians were Skagits.