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

It was springtime in an early year of pioneer times. D. T. and Louisa Denny were living in their log cabin in the swale, an opening in the midst of the great forest, about midway between Elliott Bay and Lake Union. Not very far away was their only neighbor, Thomas Mercer, with his family of several young daughters.

On a pleasant morning, balmy with the presage of coming summer, as the two pioneers, David T. Denny and Thomas Mercer, wended, their way to their task of cutting timber, they observed some of the cattle lying down in an open space, and heard the tinkling bell of one of the little band wandering about cropping fresh spring herbage in the edge of the woods. They looked with a feeling of affection at the faithful dumb creatures who were to aid in affording sustenance, as well as a sort of friendly companionship in the lonely wilds.

After a long, sunny day spent in swinging the ax, whistling, singing and chatting, they returned to their cabins as the shadows were deepening in the mighty forest.

In the first cabin there was considerable anxiety manifested by the mistress of the same, revealed in the conversation at the supper table:

“David,” said she, “there was something wrong with the cattle today; I heard a calf bawl as if something had caught it and ‘Whiteface’ came up all muddy and distressed looking.”

“Is that so? Did you look to see what it was?”

“I started to go but the baby cried so that I had to come back. A little while before that I thought I heard an Indian halloo and looked out of the door expecting to see him come down to the trail, but I did not see anything at all.”

“What could it be? Well, it is so dark now in the woods that I can’t see anything; I will have to wait until tomorrow.”

Early the next morning, David went up to the place where he had seen the calves the day before, taking “Towser,” a large Newfoundland dog with him, also a long western rifle he had brought across the plains.

Not so many rods away from the cabin he found the remnants of a calf upon which some wild beast had feasted the day previous.

There were large tracks all around easily followed, as the ground was soft with spring rains. Towser ran out into the thick timber hard after a wild creature, and David heard something scratch and run up a tree and thought it must be a wild cat.

No white person had ever seen any larger specimen of the feline race in this region.

He stepped up to a big fir log and walked along perhaps fifty feet and looking up a giant cedar tree saw a huge cougar glaring down at him with great, savage yellow eyes, crouching motionless, except for the incessant twitching, to and fro, of the tip of its tail, as a cat does when watching a mouse.

Right before him in so convenient a place as to attract his attention, stood a large limb which had fallen and stuck into the ground alongside the log he was standing on, so he promptly rested his gun on it, but it sank into the soft earth from the weight of the gun and he quickly drew up, aiming at the chest of the cougar.

The gun missed fire.

Fearing the animal would spring upon him, he walked back along the log about twenty feet, took a pin out of his coat and picked out the tube, poured in fresh powder from his powder horn and put on a fresh cap.

All the time the yellow eyes watched him.

Advancing again, he fired; the bullet struck through its vitals, but away it went bolting up the tree quite a distance. Another bullet was rammed home in the old muzzle loader. The cougar was dying, but still held on by its claws stuck in the bark of the tree, its head resting on a limb. Receiving one more shot in the head it let go and came hurtling down to the ground.

Towser was wild with savage delight and bit his prostrate enemy many times, chewing at the neck until it was a mass of foam, but not once did his sharp teeth penetrate the tough, thick hide.

Hurrying back, David called for Mercer, a genial man always ready to lend a hand, to help him get the beast out to the cabin. The two men found it very heavy, all they could stagger under, even the short distance it had to be carried.

As soon as the killing of the cougar was reported in the settlement, two miles away, everybody turned out to see the monster.

Mrs. Catherine Blaine, the school teacher, who had gone home with the Mercer children, saw the animal and marveled at its size.

Henry L. Yesler and all the mill hands repaired to the spot to view the dead monarch of the forest, none of whom had seen his like before. Large tracks had been seen in various places but were credited to timber wolves. This cougar’s forearm measured the same as the leg of a large horse just above the knee joint.

Such an animal, if it jumped down from a considerable height, would carry a man to the ground with such force as to stun him, when he could be clawed and chewed up at the creature’s will.

While the curious and admiring crowd were measuring and guessing at the weight of the cougar, Mr. Yesler called at the cabin. He kept looking about while he talked and finally said, “You are quite high-toned here, I see your house is papered,” at which all laughed good-naturedly. Not all the cabins were “papered,” but this one was made quite neat by means of newspapers pasted on the walls, the finishing touch being a border of nothing more expensive than blue calico.

At last they were all satisfied with their inspection of the first cougar and returned to the settlement.

A moral might be pinned here: if this cougar had not dined so gluttonously on the tender calf, which no doubt made excellent veal, possibly he would not have come to such a sudden and violent end.

Had some skillful taxidermist been at hand to mount this splendid specimen of Felis Concolor, the first killed by a white man in this region, it would now be very highly prized.

Some imagine that the danger of encounters with cougars has been purposely exaggerated by the pioneer hunters to create admiring respect for their own prowess. This is not my opinion, as I believe there is good reason to fear them, especially if they are hungry.

They are large, swift and agile, and have the advantage in the dense forest of the northwest Pacific coast, as they can station themselves in tall trees amid thick foliage and pounce upon deer, cattle and human beings.

Several years after the killing of the first specimen, a cow was caught in the jaw by a cougar, but wrenched herself away in terror and pain and ran home with the whole frightened herd at her heels, into the settlement of Seattle.

The natives have always feared them and would much rather meet a bear than a cougar, as the former will, ordinarily, run away, while the latter is hard to scare and is liable to follow and spring out of the thick undergrowth.

In one instance known to the pioneers first mentioned in this chapter, an Indian woman who was washing at the edge of a stream beat a cougar off her child with a stick, thereby saving its life.

In early days, about 1869 or ’70, a Mr. T. Cherry, cradling oats in a field in Squowh Valley, was attacked by a cougar; holding his cradle between him and the hungry beast, he backed toward the fence, the animal following until the fence was reached. A gang of hogs were feeding just outside the enclosure and the cougar leaped the fence, seized one of the hogs and ran off with it.

A saloon-keeper on the Snohomish River, walking along the trail in the adjacent forest one day with his yellow dog, was startled by the sudden accession to their party of a huge and hungry cougar. The man fled precipitately, leaving the dog to his fate. The wild beast fell to and made a meal of the hapless canine, devouring all but the tip of his yellow tail, which his sorrowing master found near the trail the next day.

A lonely pioneer cabin on the Columbia River was enclosed by a high board fence. One sunny day as the two children of the family were playing in the yard, a cougar sprang from a neighboring tree and caught one of the children; the mother ran out and beat off the murderous beast, but the child was dead.

She then walked six or seven miles to a settlement carrying the dead child, while leading the other. What a task! The precious burden, the heavier load of sorrow, the care of the remaining child, the dread of a renewed attack from the cougar and the bodily fatigue incident to such a journey, forming an experience upon which it would be painful to dwell.

Many more such incidents might be given, but I am reminded at this point that they would appropriately appear in another volume.

Since the first settlement there have been killed in King County nearly thirty of these animals.

C. Brownfield, an old settler on Lake Union, killed several with the aid of “Jack,” a yellow dog which belonged to D. T. Denny for a time, then to A. A. Denny.

C. D. Boren, with his dog, killed others.

Moses Kirkland brought a dog from Louisiana, a half bloodhound, with which Henry Van Asselt hunted and killed several cougars.

D. T. Denny killed one in the region occupied by the suburb of Seattle known as Ross. It had been dining off mutton secured from Dr. H. A. Smith’s flock of sheep. It was half grown and much the color of a deer.

Toward Lake Washington another flock of sheep had been visited by a cougar, and Mr. Wetmore borrowed D. T. Denny’s little dog “Watch,” who treed the animal, remaining by it all night, but it escaped until a trap was set, when, being more hungry than cautious, it was secured.

CHAPTER VII.

PIONEER CHILD LIFE

The very thought of it makes the blood tingle and the heart leap. No element was wanting for romance or adventure. Indians, bears, panthers, far journeys, in canoes or on horseback, fording rivers, camping and tramping, and all in a virgin wilderness so full of grandeur and loveliness that even very little children were impressed by the appearance thereof. The strangeness and newness of it all was hardly understood by the native white children as they had no means of comparing this region and mode of life with other countries and customs.

Traditions did not trouble us; the Indians were generally friendly, the bears were only black ones and ran away from us as fast as their furry legs would carry them; the panthers did not care to eat us up, we felt assured, while there was plenty of venison to be had by stalking, and on a journey we rode safely, either on the pommel of father’s saddle or behind mother’s, clinging like small kittens or cockleburs.

Familiarity with the coquettish canoe made us perfectly at home with it, and in later years when the tenderfoot arrived, we were convulsed with inextinguishable laughter at what seemed to us an unreasoning terror of a harmless craft.

Ah! we lived close to dear nature then! Our play-grounds were the brown beaches or the hillsides covered with plumy young fir trees, the alder groves or the slashings where we hacked and chopped with our little hatchets in imitation of our elders or the Father of His Country and namesake of our state. Running on long logs, the prostrate trunks of trees several hundred feet long, and jumping from one to another was found to be an exhilarating pastime.