Part 10 (1/2)

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 a.s.selt 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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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 a.s.sured, 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 c.o.c.kleburs.

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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WHERE WE WANDERED LONG AGO]

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 slas.h.i.+ngs 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.

When the frolicsome Chinook wind came singing across the Sound, the boys flew home built kites of more or less ambitious proportions and the little girls ran down the hills, performing a peculiar skirt dance by taking the gown by the hem on either side and turning the skirt half over the head. Facing the wind it a.s.sumed a balloonlike inflation very pleasing to the small performer. It was thought the proper thing to let the hair out of net or braids at the time, as the sensation of air permeating long locks was sufficient excuse for its ”weirdness” as I suppose we would have politely termed it had we ever heard the word.

Instead we were more likely to be reproved for having such untidy heads and perhaps reminded that we looked as wild as Indians. ”As wild as Indians,” the poor Indians! How they admired the native white children!

Without ceremony they claimed blood brotherhood, saying, ”You were born in our 'illahee' (country) and are our 'tillic.u.m' (people). You eat the same food, will grow up here and belong to us.”

Often we were sung to sleep at night by their ”tama.n.u.se” singing, as we lived quite near the bank below which many Indians camped, on Elliott Bay.

I never met with the least rudeness or suffered the slightest injury from an Indian except on one occasion. Walking upon the beach one day three white children drew near a group of Indian camps. Almost deserted they were, probably the inhabitants had gone fis.h.i.+ng; the only being visible was a boy about ten years of age. Snarling out some bitter words in an unknown tongue, he flung a stone which struck hard a small head, making a slight scalp wound. Such eyes! they fairly glittered with hatred. We hurried home, the victim crying with the pain inflicted, and learned afterward that the boy was none of our ”tillic.u.m” but a stranger from the Snohomish tribe. What cruel wrong had he witnessed or suffered to make him so full of bitterness?

The Indian children were usually quite amiable in disposition, and it seemed hard to refuse their friendly advances which it became necessary to do. In their primitive state they seemed perfectly healthy and happy little creatures. They never had the toothache; just think of that, ye small consumers of colored candies! Unknown to them was the creeping horror that white children feel when about to enter the terrible dentist's den. They had their favorite fear, however, the frightful ”statalth,” or ”stick siwash,” that haunted the great forest. As near as we could ascertain, these were the ghosts of a long dead race of savages who had been of gigantic stature and whose ghosts were likewise very tall and dreadful and very fond of chasing people out of the woods on dark nights. Plenty of little white people know what the sensation is, produced by imagining that something is coming after them in the dark.

I have seen a big, brawny, tough looking Indian running as fast as he could go, holding a blazing pitchwood torch over his head while he glanced furtively over his shoulder for the approaching statalth.

Both white and Indian children were afraid of the Northern Indians, especially the Stickeens, who were head-takers.

We were seldom panic stricken; born amid dangers there seemed nothing novel about them and we took our environment as a matter of course. We were taught to be courageous but not foolhardy, which may account for our not getting oftener in trouble.

The boys learned to shoot and shoot well at an early age, first with shot guns, then rifles. Sometimes the girls proved dangerous with firearms in their hands. A sister of the writer learned to shoot off the head of a grouse at long range. A girl schoolmate, when scarcely grown, shot and killed a bear. My brothers and cousin, Wm. R. Boren, were good shots at a tender age and killed numerous bears, deer, grouse, pheasants, ducks, wild pigeon, etc., in and about the district now occupied by the city of Seattle.