Part 44 (1/2)
”'To whom it may concern: This will introduce Lord Jim, a noted Indian of this part of the country. Look out for him or he will steal the b.u.t.tons off your coat.' A further acquaintance with Lord Jim seemed to inspire the belief that the confidence of the writer was not misplaced.
”Shortly after we left Lord Jim we sailed along Protection Island, one of the beauty spots of the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
Somewhere along here another thing happened--trivial in its nature--the memory of which has stayed with me all these years.
Mr. Pettygrove was walking the deck in a meditative manner, when he happened to feel that he needed a cigar. He called to his son, Ben, about six years old, and told him to bring him some cigars.
Ben wanted to know how many he should get. His father told him to get as many as he had fingers on both hands. Ben, proud of his commission, darted away and soon returned with eight cigars. His father looked at them a moment and said: 'How is this; you have only brought me eight cigars?' 'Well,' said Ben, 'that is all the fingers I have.' 'No,' said his father, 'you have ten on both your hands.' 'Why, no I haven't,' said Ben, 'two of them are thumbs,' and I guess Ben was right.
”The next morning, after pa.s.sing Dungeness Spit, we found our vessel anch.o.r.ed abreast of what is now the business part of Port Townsend, which was then a large Indian village. That was February 21, 1852, fifty years ago today. How it stirs the blood and quickens the memory to look back over those eventful years--eventful years for our state, our Pacific Coast and our entire country--and these years have been equally eventful for the little band that landed here that day so full of hope and energy.
”Our fathers and mothers are all gone to their well-earned rest and reward. Of the thirteen children that were with them at that time nine are still living, and I am proud of the fact that they are all respectable citizens of the community in which they live.
They have seen all the history of this part of the country that amounts to much and in their humble way have helped to make it.
They have helped conquer the wilderness and the savages and have done their share in laying the foundation of what will be one of the greatest states of our Union. Their fathers were men of honesty and more than ordinary force of character, as their deeds and labors in behalf of their country and families show, and the mothers of blessed memory--their children never realized the power for good they were in this world until they were grown and had families of their own, but they know it now. They know now how they encouraged their husbands when dark days came; how they cheerfully shared the trials and hards.h.i.+ps incident to those early pioneer days, and when brighter fortunes came they exercised the same helpful guiding influence in their well ordered, comfortable homes that they did in their first log cabins in the wilderness.”
CHAPTER VII.
PERSONNEL OF THE PIONEER ARMY.
A long roll of honor I might call of the brave men and women who dared and strove in the wild Northwest of the long ago. If I speak of representative pioneers, those unnamed might be equally typical of the bold army of ”forest-felling kings,” ”forest-fallers” as well as ”fighters,” like those Northland men of old.
There are the names of Denny, Yesler, Phillips, Terry, Low, Boren, Butler, Bell, Mercer, Maple, Van a.s.selt, Horton, Hanford, McConaha, Smith, Maynard, Frye, Blaine and others who felled the forest and laid foundations at and near Seattle; Briggs, Hastings, Van Bokkelin, Hammond, Pettygrove with others founded Port Townsend, while Lansdale, Crockett, Alexander, Cranney, Kellogg, Hanc.o.c.k, Izett, Busby, Ebey and Coupe, led the van for Whidby Island; Eldridge and Roeder at Bellingham Bay; toward the head of navigation, McAllister, Bush, Simmons, Packwood, Chambers, Shelton, are a few of those who blazed the way.
The blows of the st.u.r.dy forest-felling kings rang out from many a favored spot on the sh.o.r.es of the great Inland Sea, cheerful signals for the thousands to come after them.
[Ill.u.s.tration: WILLIAM R. BOREN REV. D. E. BLAINE CARSON D. BOREN]
These, and the long list of the Here Unnamed, waged the warfare of beginnings, which required such large courage, independence, persistence, faith and uncompromising toil, as the velvet-shod aftercomers can scarcely conceive of.
Simultaneously with the early subjugation of the country, the political, educational, commercial and social initiatory movements were made of whose present development the people of Puget Sound may well be proud.
Since the organization of the Was.h.i.+ngton Pioneer a.s.sociation in October, 1883, the old pioneers and their children have met year by year in the lavish month of June to recount their adventures, toils and privations, and enjoy the sympathy begotten of similar experiences, in the midst of modern ease and plenty.
A concourse of this kind in Seattle evoked the following words of appreciation:
”No organization, no matter what its nature might be, could afford the people of Seattle more gratification by holding its a.s.semblage in their midst than is afforded them by the action of the Pioneers' a.s.sociation of Was.h.i.+ngton Territory in holding its annual gathering in this city. Unlike conventions and gatherings in which only a portion of the community is interested, the meeting of the pioneers is interesting to all. To some, of course, the event is of more importance than to others, but all have an interest in the Pioneers' a.s.sociation, all have a pride in the achievement of its members, and all can feel that they are the beneficiaries of the struggle and hards.h.i.+ps of which the pioneers tell.
”The reminiscences of the pioneers from the history of the first life breathings of our commonwealth--of a commonwealth which, though in its infancy, is grand indeed, and which gives promise of attaining greatness in the full maturity of its powers of which those who laid the foundations of the state scarcely dreamed. The pioneers are the fathers of the commonwealth; their struggles and their hards.h.i.+ps were the struggles and the hards.h.i.+ps of a state coming into being. They cleared the forests, not for themselves alone, but for posterity and for all time. As they subdued a wild and rugged land and prepared it to sustain and support its share of the people of the earth, each blow of their ax was a blow destined to resound through all time, each furrow turned by their ploughshares that the earth might yield again and again to their children's children so long as man shall inhabit the earth. No stroke of work done in the progress of that great labor was done in vain. None of the mighty energy was lost.
Each tree that fell, fell never to rise. Each nail driven in a settler's hut was a nail helping to bind together the fabric of the community. Each day's labor was given to posterity more surely than if it had been sold for gold to be buried in the earth and brought forth by delighted searchers centuries hence.
”It is for this that we honor the pioneers. It is for this that we are proud and happy to have them meet among us. We are their heirs. Our inheritance is the fruit of their labor, the reward of their fort.i.tude, the recompense of their hards.h.i.+ps. The home of today, the center of comfort and contentment, the very soul of the state, could not have been but for the log cabins of forty years ago. The imposing edifice of learning, the complete system of education, could not have been but for the crude school house of the past. The churches and religious inst.i.tutions of today are the result of the untiring and unselfish labors of the itinerant preacher who wandered back and forth, now painfully picking his way through the forest, now threading with his frail canoe the silver streams, now gliding over the calm waters of the Sound, ever laying broad and deep the true foundations of the grand civilization that was to be. The flouris.h.i.+ng cities, the steel rails that bind us to the world, the stately steamers that, behemoth-like, journey to and fro in our waters,--these things could not be but for the rude straggling hamlets, the bridle path cut with infinite labor through the most impenetrable of forests, and the canoe which darted arrow-like through gloomy pa.s.sages, over bright bays and up laughing waters.
”All honor to the pioneers--all honor and welcome. We say it who are their heirs, we whose homes are on the land which they reclaimed from the forests, we who till the fields that they first tilled, we whose pride and glory is the grand land-locked sea on which they gazed delighted so many years ago. Welcome to them, and may they come together again and again as the years pa.s.s away. When their eyes are dim with age and their hair is as white as the snows that cover the mountains they love, may they still see the land which they created the home of a great, proud people, a people loving the land they love, a people honoring and obeying the laws that they have honored and obeyed so long, a people honoring, glorying in, the flag which they bore over treeless plains, over lofty mountains, over raging torrents, through suffering and danger, always proudly, always confidently, always hopefully, until they planted it by the sh.o.r.e of the Western sea in the most beautiful of all lands. May each old settler, as he journeys year by year toward the sh.o.r.eless sea, over whose waters he must journey away, feel that the flag which he carried so far and so bravely will wave forever in the soft southwestern breeze, which kisses his furrowed brow and toys with his silvery hair. May he feel, too, that the love of the people is with him, that they watch him, lovingly, tenderly, as he journeys down the pathway, and the story of his deeds is graven forever on their minds, and love and honor forever on their hearts.”
And so do I, a descendent of a long line of pioneers in America, reiterate, ”Honor the Pioneers.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: MRS. LYDIA C. LOW]