CHAPTER IV.
Experiences in the Willamette Valley.
In the course of three or four years after we began life in the wilderness of Salt Creek, we had pastures fenced, grain fields and gardens, small apple and peach orchards grown from the seed, comfortable log cabins, barns and other outhouses, and quite a number of cattle, horses, hogs and chickens. We had grain growing and in store and vegetables in abundance. But many things we had always considered necessities were not to be had in the wilderness where we lived. Coffee, tea and sugar were among these. Having an abundance of good milk, a family could do without tea or coffee, and even an old coffee drinker could be consoled by a beverage made of roasted peas crushed in a buckskin bag. Habitual tea drinkers soon became reconciled to what was generall known as "mountain tea," a drink of a spicy odor made from the leaves of a vine found growing in the woods. Many people came to prefer this tea to any tea of commerce. But there was no substitute for sugar. Father and mother had been in the sugar camps in Kentucky and Tennessee and knew how sugar was made from the sap of maple trees. Our spring was surrounded by a grove of maple trees and though the sap was not as sweet as the sap of the sugar maple, they believed sugar could be made from it. The experiment was tried and proved a success and we had plenty of sugar, syrup and candy.
The problem of clothing had become a very serious one. Tents and wagon covers that had seen service from the Mississippi to the Columbia would shed rain when made into coats. Lined with the remnants of some old woolen garment, and with a broad collar and cuffs faced with the fur of beaver or otter, these garments would pass without criticism even though their ancestry might be known to every one by indelible marks that had been on the tent or wagon cover. It would be a mistake to suppose that this was regarded as humiliating or a real hardship. Necessity demanded very plain attire among the first settlers and custom sanctioned it. Buttons for these coats were made of pewter cast in moulds cut in blocks of soapstone. Old spoons, plates and other pieces of worn out table ware that had seen service around many a camp fire on the plains and in the mountains were used for this purpose. Garments were sometimes made of the wool-like hair of the wolf. At the time we lived in Missouri there were in almost every family a spinning wheel and loom and the women folks spun yarn of wool and cotton out of which they knit socks, stockings and other garments, and wove cloth for family use. They were therefore skilled manufacturers on a small scale in this line, but for some years after settling in Oregon there was neither cotton nor wool to be had, and the hair of the wolf was resorted to as a substitute for wool. It was a poor substitute, for the yarn spun of it was coarse and not strong. Another drawback was that wolves could not be fleeced so long as they were alive, and a man could not kill a sufficient number of the kind that were common, the prairie wolf or coyote, in a month, to make a sweater. The yarn spun from the fleece of one pelt would hardly make a pair of slippers for a child. The attempt to provide clothing in this way was, of course, an experiment which was not successful. But my Aunt Melinda had brought a pair of wool cards with her from her home in Missouri. She had some one make a spinning wheel, and after carding the fleece of wolves into rolls and spinning these into yarn she knit garments. One garment, a jumper or sweater, I often saw Uncle Charles wear. The skin of the deer, when tanned by the Indians, was soft and pliable and was used by the pioneers. Coats and trousers of buckskin were worn, but I confess to a prejudice against buckskin. I have seen poems printed on this material, notably "The Days of 49," and I have heard men talk of having notes written on it to hold against parties notoriously slow to meet their obligations, for a note written on buckskin will not wear out. In a climate where it never rains a buckskin suit might be comfortable, but in the climate where we lived, such garments often proved wretchedly disagreeable. Trousers, after frequent wettings and dryings would assume a fixed shape that admitted of no reformation. This malformation did not appear when a man was sitting, which was, for this reason, his favorite posture; but when he arose the appearance to an inexperienced eye was that he was not yet up, for the knees of his trousers did not respond to the straightening of his legs but held the shape of the sitting posture, and the seat of the trousers did likewise. We boys, ever heedless, were caught in the grasp of buckskin trousers about every other day all through the long winter season. Coming in wet and cold, we would naturally go to the fireplace to warm our hands and feet, and the wet buckskin would immediately begin to shrink as it began to dry and the result was anything but comfortable for us. After a time a heavy unbleached muslin, commonly called "factory cloth," could be gotten at Oregon City or from the Hudson Bay trading posts; this my mother and aunts dyed a light brown, using for this purpose the bark of the alder tree which was boiled in water until the desired shade was obtained. This cloth was then used to make dresses for the girls and skirts and trousers for the boys. Hats were made of braided oat straw that were both comfortable and becoming. Shoes, as I have said before, could not be purchased, and the pioneers wore buckskin moccasins when they first settled in the new country, but after a time an attempt was made to manufacture shoes of a rough sort. Some one in almost every family could hew out a last, make pegs and rough shoes which were a tolerable protection to the feet and fairly comfortable. But there was no competent tanner and the material used was rawhide, a very poor substitute for tanned leather. If we boys waded in mud or water these rawhide boots became soft and many sizes too large so that we sometimes left them sticking in the mud. When they were finally recovered it took many hours of drying and cleaning to make them fit to wear.
Notwithstanding our privations and many hardships we children found much pleasure in life. We lived close to nature in the early days. We hunted and fished and gathered wild berries and nuts in the woods and along the streams. We dug the many toothsome roots found on the hillsides and in the valleys, and contrived in many ways to find amusement and pastime in inventions of our own. My brother Elisha was an inventive and mechanical genius, and from the instructions he got from reading some old book on mechanics made a gyroscope, having cast the heavy wheel in a soapstone mould. This toy, when in operation, astonished the children, and the Indians regarded it with superstitious awe. When the wheel was put in motion and one end of the axle placed on the upright support and they saw that the other end did not fall, although there was no visible support, they would gaze at it with open mouths and breathless attention. When the wheel and axle began to move on a horizontal circle around the pivot, a deep grunt expressed their involuntary applause and satisfaction. The occult power they saw manifested, I think they regarded as a hopeless mystery, for only one among many ever demanded an explanation of it. Occasionally one would venture to say, "Iktah mamook?" or what makes it? or who makes it? Many Indians came to see the, to them, wonderful creation.
My brother also cast a cannon of lead. It was about ten inches long and weighed five or six pounds. It carried a ball the size of a buckshot and the touchhole was just large enough to admit a grain of gunpowder. Of course we had it mounted on a carriage. We used two kinds of projectile; the regular buckshot and a long bullet we moulded especially for the cannon. We began testing the gun with very small charges of powder and as our confidence in the strength of the metal grew, the charge was augmented 'till we reached the maximum of the quantity the gun would burn. In all those experiments we loaded with only one ball. Having settled the question as to the maximum charge of powder, we entered upon a series of experiments to find the maximum weight of projectile or projectiles the metal would bear—two buckshot did not appear to make much difference. A long bullet and a buckshot was all right, so we loaded with a buckshot, several paper wads, some ashes, a wad, a long bullet and paper wad all being tamped into the barrel very tight. The gun stood this severe test without injury, but the recoil carried the carriage back about five feet, and though we suspected that this drawback saved the gun, we were satisfied with the tests and that there was no danger in firing any ordinary load. The testing took several days, because the business had to be frequently suspended, on account of calls to do other work, and it consumed a large quantity of powder. It was not safe to be near the cannon when it was undergoing a test of its strength. The gun was placed near the wall of an old unoccupied log cabin and our place of safety was around the corner of the house, so that the corner would protect us if the gun should burst. So a train of powder had to be laid from the touch-hole long enough to reach a little distance past the corner, so that we could reach it with a fire-coal on the end of a long pole from our place at the end of the house. A train of powder therefore five or six feet long had to be burned every time the weapon was discharged. The gun being safe, the next thing in order was to find its range. We tried it at the side of a barn a hundred yards away, but there was no evidence that the projectile hit the barn, though we tried several tests at that distance both with buckshot and the long bullet; in fact we could not tell where the bullets went. Continuing our advance upon the target, firing occasionally as we approached, we hit the barn several times with a round shot at a distance of forty yards; we never could find where a bullet struck hut we could hear it rattle. The chickens might have suffered at short range, but we never could get one to stand still long enough to get the cannon unlimbered and sighted.
Finally a circular powder stain about two inches big was made on a foot broad board and put up for a target at a distance of twenty steps. We fired many shots at this target of both kinds of bullets, but only succeeded in piercing the board with three or four round shot. The long bullets never hit the board and we concluded that as soon as a long bullet left the gun, it began to turn end over end and both velocity and direction were lost in richocheting; and as luck would have it, this theory was verified by a mere accident. We had put a maximum charge in the gun, using a long bullet, and tamped the wad down on it very hard. Just then there happened to he an Indian coming up the path from the spring and when he was about twenty yards to one side of the target and about the same distance from the battery, the gun was very carefully sighted and discharged. The report had just reached the edge of the woods sixty yards away, but the echo had not had time to return, when the Indian came running toward us and crying out in a frightened tone of voice, "Mika tika pu nika pe kotta?" "Do you want to shoot me? for what?" We pointed to the target and assured him we were shooting at it, but he looked at it and then in the direction he had come, and said in Chinook and sign language "that the bullet was coming right at his head but he heard it whiz just in time to dodge and avoid it." We were reloading and had put in the powder and wad and I had a long bullet in my hand when our visitor held out his hand and said, "Nuh! nika nanich,"—"Say! let me see." Examining it for a moment, he uttered a grunt of satisfaction or disgust, coupled with the remark: "Cultus piltin colitin nowitka"—"It is a bad crazy projectile sure enough." We then discovered for the first time what the true quick eye of the savage had seen at a glance. The long bullet was a little smaller at one end than the other, a little bent and slightly beveled on one side of the larger end; it was almost a perfect model of the Australian boomerang, a veritable boomeranglet.
Having made this discovery, I put a round shot in the gun, for it was plain that the boomeranglet was liable to come back to the place it started from and we might not be so lucky in dodging it as the Indian had been. This shot missed the board, and the Indian, now in a good humor, being satisfied that the close call on him was an accident, and having his bow and arrows with him, strung his bow and as he did so, said, "Ulta nika pu."—"Now, I shoot," and the next instant the arrow sped. He was so alert I didn't even see him place the arrow in position, but it was launched with such force that it whizzed as it left the string. The board was split and fell in two pieces and the arrow passed on over the brow of the hill. The target had been hit nearly in the center. We all laughed, and as the Indian was a young fellow and had behaved so well after having to dodge one of our bullets, I gave him a plug of tobacco, about the size and shape of a squeezed lemon. I had had the tobacco in press under the corner of the fence a week or two. This was when we were growing and manufacturing our own tobacco. The Indian, now very much pleased with his day's sport, for when he came to us he had been hunting and had several birds he had killed, left us and went home. The small village where he lived was only a quarter of a mile from our house, up on a bench of a hill, where there was a spring in a grove of wild cherry trees. He was in fact one of our next-door neighbors. Some one in the settlement had named him Jacob, or Jake for short. He was a typical Kalapooya. The men of the Kalapooya tribes were not working men; they were sportsmen, or idlers, while the squaws were industrious and did all the work. Aside from game furnished by the men, which they killed as much for sport as anything else, the squaws had to provide all the food. They had to get the wood; sometimes carrying great bundles of sticks on their backs quite a distance. In moving from place to place they carried all the goods, provisions, wares and "plunder" of every kind. It was not unusual to see a squaw with a pack on her back heavy enough for a pony, with a child riding on top of it, and trudging along behind a man mounted on a pony, who was carrying nothing but his bow and arrows, or an old "pil-pil musket"—a kind of short musket with a red stock which the Hudson Bay Company traded to the Indians for furs. The squaw was a slave; her husband was her master.
The only battle we were in, where our cannon was taken onto the field, was an engagement with a skunk. Our dogs were very courageous and watchful, for they would not permit an Indian to approach the house even in the daytime to within less than thirty or forty yards. Many times I have heard an Indian calling for protection against the dogs and would find him standing on the fence holding to a stake for support, or on top of a hog-house on a bench of the hill, about forty yards from our dwelling. The dogs would fight a bear on panther, and two of them would kill a prairie wolf; but they would shun a skunk, though if under orders, they would make short work of one notwithstanding the disagreeable job.
One evening after supper we were sitting about the fire, some engaged in a game of fox and geese, when one of the dogs came and stood in the door and after wagging his tail and looking over his shoulder a time or two, uttered a couple of short yelps, which was to say, "There is a nasty thing in the yard you should be looking after, I don't want anything to do with it myself." When he saw we understood him, he turned and stood on the porch looking into the yard. The moon was shining and as soon as we looked out we saw a skunk, nosing around in the yard. Our cannon was already loaded with a maximum charge of powder, a wad, a buckshot, a wad, another buckshot and a wad on top of it; the long bullet, for reasons before stated, had been condemned. It was our plan to shoot at very short range and kill the animal so suddenly that it would not be able to retaliate; for the weapon a skunk fights with was as much dreaded by us as by the dogs. Speaking of the cannon being already charged, suggests the remark that all our firearms were kept loaded and ready for immediate use. Game was liable to be seen near the house at any time—dangerous wild beasts were near by at all times. The deep basso growl of the gray mountain wolf was heard of nights, as also the scream of the prowling panther, cougar, and California lion; we were few in number in the Indian territory, surrounded by their villages, never quite sure of their friendship, and frequently had cause to fear their hostility. Though we had tested the gun severely and considered it safe, we did not care to be very near it, when it went off. The gunner whose business it was to discharge the gun, for that reason, always put the coal of fire used for that purpose on the end of a very long and slim pole. When the skunk saw us advancing, it turned about and with its tail waving over its back came toward us hopping backwards, as all skunks are wont to go into action. Seeing this move on the part of the enemy, we planted the battery and I immediately sighted the gun and sprang behind the gunner, who on the spur of the moment, thrust his pole forward to apply the fire coal to the touch-hole, when the enemy discharged his battery with fatal effect, extinguishing the fire coal and routing us entirely. The gun of course fell into the hands of the enemy and we made no attempt to recover it that night. The loss of the battle was easily accounted for—we had too much tactics. We had to plant our gun, sight, and apply the fire coal, while all the skunk had to do was to plant himself and fire. What was the next thing to be done after the battle? Bury the dead? No! There was no dead except the dead fire coal and that was left on the field where it fell, probably near the touch-hole. The next thing was to bury our clothes. We went to the garden and stripped off our clothes, and buried them, then went to the house and to bed. Just before I fell asleep I heard the gunner say, "By George, warn't that skunk loaded for bear?"
A boy in those days always wore his best clothes, not because he was vain, but because he had only one suit; so when we got out of bed in the morning we did not have to dress before breakfast, and we enjoyed this change; for we had been required to dress before breakfast so long that it had become monotonous. Our appearance at the table the first time attracted some attention and was the subject of several remarks, but they do not belong to this story. After breakfast we skipped out to the garden, dug up our clothes and dressed. Then we visited the battlefield; the cannon was there but the skunk had gone. We removed the gun to the garden and left it to deodorize at leisure. There was no danger of anything with a nose disturbing it. Abount noon, becoming ahungered, we approached the house and had reached the porch when we were warned away with threats of violence and told to go to the kitchen window. There our dinner was handed out to us in a squaw-cap on the end of a pole.
The full text of the law in our case was now promulgated: Our garments must be buried in the earth three days and three nights. If the clothes were in the ground only of nights, then the program to be carried out would take nearly a week— we chose the longer horn of the dilemma. In the course of three or four days, being confined from day to day to our own society, we began to feel lonesome and made several attempts to enlarge our circle. We tried to approach the dogs, but they declined our advances. We discovered Jake passing by one day and tried to engage him in social chat, but before we got very near him a zephyr passed by and gave him our wind and he began to make off talking back in Chinook, saying among other things, "Uh! hyas humm, skukum humm now witka; clonas mika muckamuck humm-ena"—"Uh! big smell, strong smell you bet; may be you eat skunk." He also made warlike signs, such as taking hold of his hair at the crown with his left hand and putting an arrow in his teeth with his right. The cannon stood there heavily charged and we would have taken a shot at the impudent and ungrateful savage, if we'd had a live coal, but we hadn't and we didn't have time to disrobe and run into the house after one. I think I might have been justified in shooting him on the spot, for you know it hadn't been long since I had given him a whole plug of tobacco I had manufactured myself. However, on the fifth day in the evening a committee visited us and we were allowed to enter the house in full dress.
The reader must not infer from the foregoing that we were always idle and bent on amusing ourselves. We were each required to do our share of work of whatever kind we were capable of doing. Every boy had to put his hands to the plow as soon as he was old enough to guide a yoke of oxen or plow a straight furrow. Rails had to be cut and split, for all the fences were built of rails. There were the hundred and one chores to be done on a farm, and so we earned our hours of leisure. We were also required to attend school throughout the winter season, and we had some very excellent teachers during the seven years we lived in the Willamette Valley.
In the year 1846 my father, with a number of other pioneers, resolved to go on an exploring expedition, the object being to find a more direct route for immigrants coming to Oregon. They hoped to find a route by which others might reach the new country without having to suffer the hardships they had endured but could never forget. Another reason which had much influence in determining the pioneers to undertake the expedition was the fact that the question as to which power, Great Britain or the United States, would eventually secure a title to the country, had not been settled. In case war should occur, and Great Britain be successful, it was Important that we should have a way by which to leave the country without running the gauntlet of the Hudson Bay Company's forts, or falling a prey to the Indian tribes which were under British influence. Fifteen men were found who were willing to undertake the hazardous enterprise, father and Uncle Jesse making two of the party. Each man had a saddle horse and a pack horse. After making arrangements for the subsistence of their families this little party started out into an unexplored wilderness among tribes of hostile Indians. They left their homes in the Willamette Valley on the 20th day of June, 1846. The route they followed led across the Kalapooya mountains into the valley of the Umpqua, thence south through the mountains into the Rogue River Valley to the base of the Siskiyou mountain chain, thence east over the mountains into the Klamath country between the upper and lower Klamath lakes, across Lost River and along the shore of Tule Lake, and thence around the south end of Goose Lake and over the mountains in a southeasterly direction to the Humbolt River. After more than three months of perils, privations and hardships they reached home in October, having blazed a route by which immigrants could reach the Willamette country. I give here a short extract from father's account of this road expedition, written in 1878, thirty-one years after the event. This sketch takes up the narrative of the experiences of the party when on the return trip:
"No circumstances worthy of mention occurred on the monotonous march from Black Rock to the timbered regions of the Cascade chain; then our labors became quite arduous. Every day we kept guard over the horses while we worked the road, and at night we dared not cease our vigilance, for the Indians continually hovered about us, seeking for advantage. By the time we had worked our way through the mountains to the Rogue River Valley, and then through the Grave Creek hills and Umpqua chain, we were pretty thoroughly worn out. Our stock of provisions had grown very short, and we had to depend, to a great extent, for sustenance, upon game. Road working, hunting and guard duty had taxed our strength greatly, and on our arrival in the Umpqua Valley, knowing that the greatest difficulties in the way of the immigrants had been removed, we decided to proceed at once to our homes in the Willamette. There we arrived on the 3rd day of October, 1846, having been absent three months and thirteen days. During all this time our friends had heard nothing from us, and realizing the dangerous character of our expedition, many believed in the rumor which sometime before reached them, that we had all been murdered by the Indians. As soon as we could possibly make the arrangements, we sent out a party, with oxen and horses, to meet the immigrants and aid them in reaching the Willamette settlements. For this assistance we made no demand; nor did we tax them for the use of the road, as was alleged by parties inimical to our enterprise. It had been the distinct understanding that the road should be free, and the consciousness of having opened up better means of access to the country than was afforded by the expensive and dangerous route down the Columbia which we had tried to our sorrow, would be ample compensation for all our labors and hardships in opening the south road. Of course our enterprise was opposed by that mighty monopoly, the Hudson Bay Company, whose line of forts and trading posts on the Columbia afforded them rare opportunities for trade with the immigrants. Many of the immigrants who followed us during the fall of 1846, had a hard time, though not so hard as they would probably have experienced on the other route; and some of them, not understanding the situation fully, became infected with the spirit of persecution which had its origin with the Hudson Bay Company, and joined in charging us with leading the travel away from the northern route for purposes of personal speculation. Certain members of the party were singled out to bear the burden of persecution, whereas, if any member of the party was animated by improper motives in seeking to open the road, all were equally guilty, as the party was governed in all its proceedings by a majority vote of its members.
"The efforts of the Hudson Bay Company to put down the road proved an eminent failure. Its superior advantages were better and better known and appreciated every year. It never ceased to be an important route of travel, and a large portion of the population of our state entered by this channel. It is a very significant fact that the great thoroughfare of today, from the Willamette to the Siskiyou chain, and thence out through the Lake country and on to the Humbolt, departs rarely from the route blazed out by the road company 31 years ago."
In 1847 occurred the tragedy of the Whitman massacre, and the Cayuse Indian war followed. A number of young men who had come to Oregon in our train in 1843 aanswered the call for volunteers. These young men had followed the fortunes of the Applegate families and had been faithful and loyal friends and helpers, and I recall with pride their ready answer to the call for volunteers to follow the treacherous Indians who had murdered the whites at the Whitman mission. Whatever was lacking to complete the equipment of these young men, father and my uncles supplied. We boys were too young to go to war, but we turned over our little lead cannon to Billy Doke to be melted and moulded into bullets.
I believe it is well understood that the discovery of gold in California was made on January 24th, 1848, in a mill race that General Sutter was having excavated on the Sacramento River. Means of communication were poor, and it was some time before the news reached our straggling settlement in the Willamette Valley. When it did, it caused great excitement and an exodus for the mines. Father, with a large percentage of the male population, left for the gold fields. The party prospected a little on the Rogue River in the Rogue River Valley, and on a smaller stream now known as the Applegate, then pushed on to California. After spending a number of months in the mines of California, the Oregon party, numbering about 40 men, chartered a small sailing vessel at San Francisco, intending to return by water to the Columbia. We often heard father tell the thrilling story of the dreary voyage in winter weather, of how for weeks the little craft was buffeted by chilling winds until the sails and ropes were covered with ice, and the passengers were half starved and half frozen. Of how they were tyrannized over by a heartless captain and crew until they believed they were in the hands of pirates whose purpose was to starve them to death and throw them overboard in order to gain possession of the gold they had accumulated in the mines. Of course the Oregon men would not stand this. They organized a rebellion and took the ship. The captain and crew were put on short rations, along with the other men, and were required to make the mouth of the Columbia River in as short a time as possible. This they did, landing the Oregon party at the old pioneer town of Astoria.