Part 36 (1/2)

Again at Bean's Point an Indian was shot by a white man, a Scandinavian; the charge was a liberal one of buckshot.

Some white men who went to inquire into the matter followed the Indian's trail, finding ample evidence that he had climbed the hill back of the house, where he may have been employed to work, and weak from his wounds had sat down on a log and then went back to the water; but his body was never found. It was supposed that the murderer enticed him back again and when he was dead, weighted and sunk him in the deep, cold waters of the Sound.

At one time there was quite a large camp of Indians where now runs Seneca Street, Seattle, near which was my home. It was my father's custom to hire the Indians to perform various kinds of hard labor, such as grubbing stumps, digging ditches, cutting wood, etc. For a while we employed a tall, strong, fine-looking Indian called Lachuse to cut wood; through a long summer day he industriously plied the ax and late in the twilight went down to a pool of water, near an old bridge, to bathe. As he pa.s.sed by a clump of bushes, suddenly the flash and report of a gun shattered the still air and Lachuse fell heavily to the ground with his broad chest riddled with buckshot.

There was great excitement in the camp, running and crying of the women and debate by the men, who soon carried him into the large Indian house.

He was laid down in the middle of the room and the medicine man, finding him alive, proceeded to suck the wounds while the tama.n.u.se noise went on.

A distracted, grey-haired lum-e-i, his mother, came to our house to beg for a keeler of water, all the time crying, ”Mame-loose Lachuse!

Achada!”

Two of the little girls of our family, sleeping in an old-fas.h.i.+oned trundle bed, were so frightened at the commotion that they pulled the covers up over their heads so far that their feet protruded below.

The medicine man's treatment seems to have been effective, aided by the tama.n.u.se music, as Lachuse finally recovered.

The revengeful deed was committed by a Port Was.h.i.+ngton Indian, in retaliation for the stealing of his ”klootchman” (wife) by an Indian of the Duwampsh tribe, although it was not Lachuse, this sort of revenge being in accordance with their heathen custom.

”Jim Keokuk,” an Indian, killed another Indian in the marsh near the gas works; he struck him on the head with a stone. Jim worked as deck hand on a steamer for a time, but he in turn was finally murdered by other Indians, wrapped with chains and thrown overboard, which was afterward revealed by some of the tribe.

There were many cases of retaliation, but the Indians were fairly peaceable until degraded by drink.

The beginning of hostilities against the white people on the Sound, by some historians is said to have been the killing of Leander Wallace at old Fort Nesqually. One of them gives this account:

”Prior to the Whitman ma.s.sacre, Owhi and Kamiakin, the great chiefs of the upper and lower Yakima nations, while on a visit to Fort Nesqually, had observed to Dr. Tolmie that the Hudson Bay Company's posts with their white employes were a great convenience to the natives, but the American immigration had excited alarm and was the constant theme of hostile conversation among the interior tribes. The erection in 1848, at Fort Nesqually, of a stockade and blockhouse had also been the subject of angry criticism by the visiting northern tribes. So insolent and defiant had been their conduct that upon one afternoon for over an hour the officers and men of the post had guns pointed through the loop-holes at a number of Skawhumpsh Indians, who, with their weapons ready for a.s.sault, had posted themselves under cover of adjacent stumps and trees.

”Shortly before the shooting of Wallace, rumors had reached the fort that the Snoqualmies were coming in force to redress the alleged cruel treatment of Why-it, the Snoqualmie wife of the young Nesqually chief, Wyampch, a dissipated son of Lahalet.

”Dr. Tolmie treated such a pretext as a mere cloak for a marauding expedition of the Snoqualmies.

”Sheep shearing had gathered numbers of extra hands, chiefly Snohomish, who were occupying mat lodges close to the fort, besides unemployed stragglers and camp followers.

”On Tuesday, May 1, 1849, about noon, numbers of Indian women and children fled in great alarm from their lodges and sought refuge within the fort. A Snoqualmie war party, led by Pat Kanem, approached from the southwestern end of the American plains. Dr.

Tolmie having posted a party of Kanakas in the northwest bastion went out to meet them.

”Tolmie induced Pat Kanem to return with him to the fort, closing the gate after their entrance.”

The following is said to be the account given by the Hudson Bay Company's officials:

”The gate nearest the mat lodges was guarded by a white man and an Indian servant. While Dr. Tolmie was engaged in attending a patient, he heard a single shot fired, speedily followed by two or three others. He hastily rushed to the bastion, whence a volley was being discharged at a number of retreating Indians who had made a stand and found cover behind the sheep was.h.i.+ng dam of Segualitschu Creek. Through a loop-hole the bodies of an Indian and a white man were discernible at a few yards distance from the north gate where the firing had commenced.

”He hastened thither and found Wallace breathing his last, with a full charge of buckshot in his stomach. The dying man was immediately carried inside of the fort.

”The dead Indian was a young Skawhumpsh, who had accompanied the Snoqualmies.

”The Snohomish workers, as also the stragglers, had been, with the newly arrived Snoqualmies, in and out of the abandoned lodges, chatting and exchanging news. A thoughtless act of the Indian sentry posted at the water gate, in firing into the air, had occasioned a general rush of the Snohomish, who had been cool observers of all that had pa.s.sed outside.

”Walter Ross, the clerk, came to the gate armed, and seeing Kussa.s.s, a Snoqualmie, pointing his gun at him, fired but missed him. Kussa.s.s then fired at Wallace. Lewis, an American, had a narrow escape, one ball pa.s.sing through his vest and trousers and another grazing his left arm.

”Quallawowit, as soon as the firing began, shot through the pickets and wounded Tzia.s.s, an Indian, in the muscles of his shoulder, which soon after occasioned his death.