Two Years in Oregon Part 14

"Well, we just cut the logs in the woods on the edge of the river, and rolled them in and pegged them together with lighter trees laid across.

It took us about all the morning to get out into the current, and all the afternoon to get back again. But, after all, we got to the Cascades."

"How did you get past them?"

"We had to just put the wagons together, and cut a road for ourselves, six miles round the portage, till we could take to the river again.

Then we got boats and came all right down the Columbia and up the Willamette past where Portland now stands."

"Where was Portland then?"

"There was no Portland, I tell you--just a few houses and cabins. I forget what they called the place. Anyhow, we got pretty soon to the Tualitin Plains, where Forest-grove Station is now, and there we pa.s.sed that first winter in Oregon."

"Was it rough on you?"

"Well, no--not particularly. All the lot of us crowded into one little cabin; but we lived pretty well."

"What did you live on?"

"Well, there was a little grist-mill near by, and the folks had raised a little wheat and some potatoes and peas. We got no meat at all that winter. The next spring we came on into King's Valley and took up the old place--you know where I showed it you--under the hill."

"Weren't there plenty of Indians there?"

"Indians! I should think so; about two or three hundred Klick-i-tats were camped in that valley then. Good Indians they were, tall, and straight as a dart."

"Who was the chief?"

"A man they called Quarterly. When we came in and camped, that Indian came up to my father and said, 'What do you want here?' My father said, 'We have come here to settle down and farm and make homes for ourselves.' 'Well,' says the Indian, 'you can; if you don't meddle with us, we won't hurt you.' No more they did; we never had a cross word from them."

"Was the country theirs?"

"Well, no; it belonged properly to the Calapooyas, and these Klick-i-tats had rented it off them for some horses and cloths and things for a hunting-ground."

"Plenty of game?"

"Just lots of it; elk and deer plenty, and the bunch-gra.s.s waist-high.

The Indian ponies were rolling fat; good ponies they were, too."

"What sort of houses had these Indians?"

[Sidenote: _INDIAN HOUSES AND CUSTOMS._]

"The Klick-i-tats had regular lodges: sticks set in the ground in a circle and tied together at the top, and covered all over with the rush mats they used to make. Good workers they were, too. They and the Calapooyas fell out once. I mind very well one day the Klick-i-tats came running in to our camp to say there was ever such a lot of Calapooyas coming in to attack them. They sent off their women and children to the hills, and then drove all their horses down to our camp. Strange, wasn't it, they should think their stock safer with five or six white men? There must have been several hundred of those Calapooyas."

"Did the fight come off?"

"Not that time; they made it up with some presents of horses and beads and things."

"What's become of those Klick-i-tats?"

"All that's left of them are gone to the reservation away north on the Columbia. They had their big fight with the Calapooyas down there by the Mary River bridge, out by Wrenn's school-house, just before we came into the country. The Calapooyas were too many for them, for they were, I should say, three to one. That was quite a battle, I should say.--But here comes one of the early settlers. Why don't you ask him about it?"

Just then the door had been opened, and in came a slender, gray-haired minister, with black coat and white collar and tie.

"So you were an early settler?"

"Yes, I had some experiences in early days. Did you ever hear of our Presbyterian colony?"

"I think not."

"Well, I was born and raised in Pennsylvania. I had just finished my theological course and got married. I had heard a good deal about Oregon, and took the notion of getting some Presbyterians to go out there. This was in 1851, when the law had been pa.s.sed giving half a section of land to every settler, and half another section for his wife, if he had one."

"How did you set about getting Presbyterians together?"

"I just put an advertis.e.m.e.nt in the Pennsylvania papers that a Presbyterian minister intended starting for Oregon in the spring of 1852, and would be glad for any Presbyterians to join him and found a colony there."

"Did you get many answers?"

"About eighty agreed to go, but a good many weakened before the time came, and only about forty of them started; some twenty came in afterward, so that our party was sixty strong. When we left St. Joe, in Missouri, we had twenty wagons. I had a nice carriage with four mules for my wife, and a half-share in a wagon and ox-team. We left St. Joe in May, 1852, and arrived in Oregon four months and a half afterward."

"Did you travel all the time?"

"We laid over for Sundays, and I preached every Sunday on the journey but one, when we were crossing an alkali desert, and had to push on through to water."

"Were there many emigrants on the road, minister?"

"There was the heaviest emigration to Oregon that year that there has ever been. Many times I have climbed a hill just off the great emigrant trail, and counted a hundred wagons and more ahead, and more than a hundred behind us."

"Did you carry any feed for your stock?"

"Not any, and it was terribly hard on stock, as the bunch-gra.s.s on and near the trail was eaten down so close. It was harder on the oxen than on the mules. I brought all my mules safe into Oregon, but only one ox out of our team."

"How did you do when the oxen gave out?"

"Oh, a man just cut his wagon in half and hitched what oxen he had left on to the front half, and left the hinder end there in the desert."

"Did you have trouble with the Indians?"

"None at all; all quiet and peaceable. We came into Oregon by way of Boise City, Idaho, and Umatilla and the Dalles. The last sixty miles my wife and I walked nearly all the way, for the mules gave out crossing the Cascades, and we drove them before us into this valley. The first milk and b.u.t.ter was at Foster's, near Oregon City; but one old lady in the crowd would not eat the b.u.t.ter her son had bought for her: she said it tasted too strong of silver."

[Sidenote: _THE PRESBYTERIAN COLONY._]

"Where did you settle down?"

"About three miles from Corvallis, or Marysville, as it was called then. Just twelve houses in the place, and two of them stores."

"What did you do for a house?"

"Just set to and built one. I built it round my wife as she camped in the middle. I cut me down a big fir-tree, and split it out into boards and s.h.i.+ngles."

"What was this valley like then?"