Blazing the way; or, pioneer experiences in Idaho, Washington, and Oregon

Preface

The purpose of this book is twofold: First, to show clearly, from the experience of the writer, that the demands for pioneer work in the Church have not yet ceased to exist ; second, to present a faithful and true picture of the physical and moral conditions of the country described.

Concerning each of these matters there is much confusion of mind among some people. Those who live in the older sections of our country find it difficult to comprehend the situation where the people are so widely scattered as they are in the Rocky Mountain States and Territories. This book sets forth what the writer has seen, together with some facts which he can vouch for as if he had seen them. It is certainly much more to be trusted than the ordinary real estate circular, or the prospectus of the mine promoter. The writer has no motive in presenting a view other than is borne out by facts. 5

Contents

CHAPTBK PAGE

I. Pioneer Conditions, - - - ii

II. The Inland Empire, - . - jg

CHAPTER I. Pioneer Conditions

Pioneer work has not yet ended in the United States of America. Many thousands of people still live in log or sod houses, or in mere board shanties, and some of these are several miles from their nearest neighbors. In the year 1900 the population of the State of Idaho was less than two persons for each square mile, while in the State of New York each square mile contained one hundred and thirty-five persons, and in several other Eastern States the population was even more dense. The entire Rocky Mountain region is as yet sparsely settled, and one may travel many miles by train through parts of the great West and scarcely see its inhabitants. What must it be, then, when one goes away from the railroads among the mountains, or on the great plains where the only means of transportation are the stage-coach or the cayuse? Men and II women are yet living who have never seen a railway coach, or heard the screech of the locomotive, and many of these live in the Western States and Territories.

The people of this section are engaged in a great variety of occupations. Some are miners, others are :cattlemen or sheep-herders, while others are farmers, hunters, or teamsters. Of course the great majority of people who dwell in the arid or mountain region have come from the East, and have been accustomed to nearer neighbo: s and modern methods of living, and many still live within easy reach of cities and towns and railroads ; and yet it is true that many wander away from the lines of travel to seek their fortune in remote parts of the land.

A hundred years ago, when Lewis and Clark began their expedition across the continent, almost the last white man they left on the very outskirts of the settlements was Daniel Boone, of Kentucky fame, who had been retreating from the abodes of men during all his long life of seventy years, so intense was his infatuation for the wilderness. The restless spirit of Boone

Pioneer Conditions. 13

seems to inhere in many persons who are unable to enjoy life with near neighbors, or can not endure the cities and towns and modern arts of civil life. In response to this spirit, thousands are still seeking congenial haunts far from their fellows among the lofty mountains, or on the great plains of the western half of our country.

These people are gathered from all parts of our own, and from many other lands. Here are people of infinite variety, no matter by what principle of classification we judge them, even as they come from all kinds of homes and from all sorts of environment and opportunity. Some are persons of culture and refinement, and others are their pronounced opposite in these graces of civilization. Some are religious, and some are very irreligious. Let no one think, however, that all who live in rough and uncouth society are boors in manners or education. It is well known that the grade of intelligence in mining [camps is very high, and even the adventurers of the plains are not behind their fellows of the Eastern cities in general information. One would be surprised to learn of the number who are from the best colleges of the land, or have had the advantages of the universities of Europe, or have traveled in Eastern countries. They have come to the West to improve their fortune, to make money, to grow up with the country, and to make a name for themselves. Their being here is an evidence of their energy, and this is displayed by a certain restlessness of spirit and of dissatisfaction with present conditions. Some are in the professions, and others are seeking fortunes in speculation in mines, in handling sheep or cattle, or in managing irrigation schemes. Those who were failures in the old home country are trying to achieve success, and those who were successful elsewhere are attempting to win a greater success in their new home. Along with these are some who would have been dead long ago had they not aroused themselves and determined to try for life by a complete change of conditions and climate in a strange land. Here, as elsewhere, the masses are striving chiefly for worldly gain with but little thought of the demands of a higher nature or the calls of humanity. Others, however, are giving due

Pioneer Conditions. 15

heed to all the requirements of existence, and are devoting some attention, at least, to the welfare of society. We find among these last a due proportion of schoolteachers and ministers of the Gospel, who are laying the foundations for the future empire of religion and civilization. Schools and Churches and other institutions, the object of which is to save and uplift humanity, are becoming more numerous as the country makes advances in age and material things. The log schoolhouse, sometimes with a roof of sod or shakes, is a place of worship as well as of instruction, and the itinerant preacher is as much an institution as is the schoolteacher, though his circuit may be so large that he can not make his rounds more frequently than once or twice a month.

The circuit system is not a thing of the past in the Rocky Mountain region. It is recognized as being so well adapted to the work to be done, that it is now employed by all denominations, and a circuit preacher is not necessarily a Methodist, as was once the case, for all the Churches have learned to use the machinery which is best adapted to the ends in view and is best able to do the work required. In a sparsely settled country the circuit rider is indispensable to the best results in religious work. The same is also true concerning the presiding eldership. The Methodist Episcopal Church has this institution both in name and in fact, and all others have something -juite like it in practice, whether they will acknowledge the name or not. The superintendence exists under different names in different Churches. In one it is the ''Synodical missionary;" in another it is the "bishop;" in yet another it is the "superintendent" or the "State evangelist." Under a great variety of names the superintendency is maintained, and by its aid the work is carried forward by all the Churches. No denomination in a new country can succeed without the circuit system and some form of superintendency. The name by which this is designated is of little consequence.

The writer has been a presiding elder in the Rocky Mountain region for eleven years. During this time he has traveled by all sorts of conveyances in his regular work more than 135,000

Pioneer Conditions. I7

miles. While much of this journeying has been accomphshed by modern methods, the stage-coach and the horse and saddle have received their full share of patronage, and the writer is quite familiar with each ; at the same time he has not forgotten the art of walking, for long pedestrian trips have often been a part of his regular exercise. He has occasionally preached in the large city churches, but more frequently in the log schoolhouse, or in the open air, or in the humble home of the settler. He has shared the hospitality of all classes, having sometimes been in the home of the rich, but more frequently under the roof of a brother itinerant, or in the liome of the farmer or cabin of the miner. He has often slept for hours in the day-coach of the railroad, when night and day were much the same. He has many times made his pillow on the hard seat of the waiting-room, and on several occasions he has spent the night in the strawstack or hay-mow, or in an Indian cabin, or, possibly, in still more uncomfortable quarters. He has fared sumptuously on the best the land afforded, and he has sometimes fasted when it was not from choice. He believes he has done his share of preaching the Word, besides conducting the full quota of business and other meetings. He thanks God for success in the work, and rejoices that the kingdom has been built up. He writes this little book in order that others may know that jnoneer work is still being done, that home missions are a great success, from whatsoever viewpoint looked upon, and to increase the interest of all classes in the work of new fields by addmg something to the accumulations of knowledge concerning the work of extending the kingdom of our Lord in this great land.

CHAPTER II. The Inland Empire

"That is the best I tan do for you/' said Bishop Walden, as he placed his finger on the Hst of appointments, about ten minutes before the adjournment of the Columbia River Conference in 1892. He had called me to his table, and then indicated that for the ensuing year I was to be the presiding elder of the Spokane District. He possibly observed that I turned a trifle pale, for this appointment was wholly unlooked for, and then he added by way of comfort : "That means business, and hard work: now do your best."

The Spokane District at that time included a part of Eastern Washington and a part of Northern Idaho, a tract about the size of half of the State of Pennsylvania. Four years later, by a readjustment of boundaries, the district was doubled in area. Before assuming charge of this 19 important and growing field I had learned, on consulting that wonderful book, the "Discipline of the Methodist Episcopal Church," in the chapter on the "Duties of a Presiding Elder," that one of my duties was to travel through the district. One of the advantages to be derived from this is the knowledge to be gained in geology, chemistry, and other sciences, not omitting natural history and botany.

The year 1900 found me, by another turn of the itinerant wheel, traveling in the same capacity with the entire Idaho Conference as my field. This Conference embraces all of Southern Idaho and a part of Eastern Oregon, a territory about the size of all of New York State and half of Pennsylvania. What shall I say of the country included between the Rocky Mountains and the Cascade Range, familiarly known as the "Inland Empire?" It is true that this empire of territory is not all embraced within the bounds of the two districts just mentioned, but they cover a large part of it. In my journeys I have sometimes gone beyond these limitations, and in this book I shall not be confined by very contracted lines, though the major portion of the narrative pertains to the "Inland Empire."

This is a very difficult country clearly to describe to a person from the East, because it presents so many features which are unknown to those who have never seen it. It is a land of constantly recurring surprises, and it takes years of experience fully to know it. In the first place, it is a very large and sparsely inhabited country. Its chief cities are Spokane, Walla Walla, and Boise, with dozens of other lesser towns which range in population from a thousand to five times that number. Much of the section under consideration is very fertile, and many parts are in a high state of cultivation, while other larger portions are apparently worthless, desert wastes. Lofty mountains and deep canyons divide and cut the land into separate natural divisions. The mountains run up in the highest peaks about nine thousand feet, and the valleys sink as low as seven hundred feet above sea level. Nearly all the rivers and small streams flow through deep canyons, in some instances from fifteen hundred to two thousand feet below the table lands, which are only a few miles distant. This is true of the Columbia and Snake, the great rivers of the Northwest, as well as of their thousands of tributaries. This difference in altitude will in itself alone account for a great diversity in climate and rainfall. Climatic conditions as different as those of Syracuse and Washington, D. C, are here frequently found in places not twenty miles apart.

The mountains are generally covered with pine, fir, and spruce timber, and the streams are sometimes fringed with cottonwood and willow, and in other places their banks are absolutely bare. The great plains and plateaus, generally speaking, are barren as far as trees are concerned, and the plains of Eastern Oregon and Southern Idaho are covered with the familiar mark of the Rocky Mountain region, the ubiquitous sagebrush, a bushy growth of highly scented and bitter shrub, varying in height from a few inches to ten feet. As we journey over the vast stretches of land covered with this growth as far as the eye can reach, the query constantly arises, What is it all for ?

Many parts of Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho, in their virgin state, abounded with the wild rose and sunflowers. These formerly flowering meadows have been converted into the famous and more utilitarian wheatfields, whose yield per acre has been the marvel of wheat-growers in all parts of the world. Northern and Central Idaho has lofty mountains, whose summits are, in some instances, nearly always covered with snow. Below the snow-line they are clothed with timber, or a light growth of mountain mahogany and sarvis-bush, with occasional groups of quaking asp, and beneath the surface they are rich in minerals. Indeed this is true also of both Eastern Oregon and Northern Washington.

Let us take a brief excursion from Spokane, in Eastern Washington, to Lake Chelan, to the west of the Columbia in the same State. We journey due west, and after the first twenty miles we get away from the pine forests which surround our point of departure, and we are on the rolling prairie. The soil is rich and dry and dusty. Is it not a remarkable fact that real estate dealers and railroad companies, in all their representations of this country, have never yet discovered that there is dust here ? Yet it is very much in evidence. It covers our clothing ; it gets into our eyes ; we see it, we smell it, we taste it. Wherever air goes, dust goes. Lewis and Clark on their westward journey of discovery encountered it the same as all others who have visited these regions. Their latest historian says: "As the party advanced to the westward, following the crooked course of the Missouri, they were very much afflicted with inflamed eyes, occasioned by the fine alkaline dust that blew so lightly that it sometimes floated for miles, like clouds of smoke. The dust even penetrated the works of one of their watches although it was protected by tight double cases. In these later days, even the double windows of the railway trains do not keep out this penetrating dust, which makes one's skin dry and rough."

We hardly dare tell what we have experienced in our encounters with dust for fear it will appear to have penetrated even our reputation for truthfulness. We will, however, venture to make a statement of a well-known fact that can be vouched for by others. Many is the time, when riding on a stage-coach behind four horses, we have been unable to see the leaders because of dust. On account of this fact many teamsters put bells on their horses to avoid collisions with other teams.

We are now in this dry and dusty region, with our faces to the west. A hundred miles brings us to the Grand Coulee, a long depression in the earth not unlike a dry river-bed, a thousand feet in depth. It is perfectly dry, save for a few pools of stagnant water strongly impregnated with alkali. Descending to its bottom, we look about and note the great walls of basaltic rock rising on either side, and we are led to inquire whether the earth has cracked open and then partly filled the crevasse from fires beneath. Climbing out of this depression, we go on for twenty miles further, and, lo! another coulee, deeper still, lies before us. This is known as the Moses Coulee, and the two are a puzzle to the geologist. One is fifty, and the other one hundred miles in length. They resemble river-beds in appearance, and it is no wonder the question is often asked whether the mighty Columbia has not flowed through them at some remote period. Many think it has, and possibly this is the correct theory in explanation of these wonders of nature.

We press on for thirty miles farther, still facing the west. We begin to descend by a winding road from the central table-lands or plains of the Columbia. How steep the way is! The road is eight miles long in making this descent. Down, down we go. Mighty convulsions of nature are in evidence at every turn. The earth has been broken up by most violent upheavals. Here earthquakes have frolicked. At some remote period these rocks have been melting hot, and this soil has been blown from volcanoes as the finest dust and ashes. Rocks are everywhere, tier above tier ; now in regular basaltic form, like the Giant's Causeway ; now broken in the utmost confusion, as if hurled by an army of battling gods. A mile or two before us we see the jutting rimrock standing like a mighty fortress. Between it and us flows the tortuous Columbia, and beyond, and higher still, are the Cascades, the tips of which are white with snow, in beautiful contrast with the green forests at a lower level.

We are still descending, and presently we round a mighty rock, and catch our first glimpse of the glistening Columbia in the canyon below. We drop down still farther, and the river is at cur feet. We look about us and presently discover, here and there, peach-orchards and small garden patches on the sand-bars of the river, irrigated by streams which tumble from the rocks above, or by water raised from the Columbia by wheel or pump. Sand? Here is sand enougK to supply a transcontinental railroad for years, and then there would be enough and to spare. Sometimes it drifts like snow, much to the confusion of the farmer, whose lands are encroached upon by this headstrong trespasser, which regards no other law than that of the winds and gravitation. At times it delays trains by its drifts, if the railroad lies in its way. Farther down the river, where the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company has built its track parallel to the stream for a hundred miles or more, trains are sometimes delayed for hours by the sand which drifts across the track. It does seem as though sand is not equally distributed either on the earth's surface or among its people.

We are at the water's edge now, and the boat is coming across for us. It is a cable ferry. You never saw one in the East? Well, there are several sights here which are novel to persons from the Atlantic seaboard, just as there are scenes in the East which would cause us of the West to stare and wonder. For instance, you do not have the Columbia in the East, nor any river like it. Bryant may be excused under the circumstance for having brought the Columbia into poetry in a very poetic manner, and from a New England viewpoint when he wrote,

" The continuous woods, Where rolls the Oregon ;"

for there is scarcely a tree in sight, nor would you see one, except high above the river, were you to go up or down the stream for a hundred miles.

But that cable ferry, — what is it, and what is it like? Well, it must be seen and studied at close range in order to be understood and appreciated. In this respect it is much like many features of the country where it is the principal means for crossing the streams which can not be forded. A wire cable reaches across the river and is made fast at each end to a high tower. To this cable the boat is attached by two ropes, wifh grooved wheels at their ends, which run on the cable as a track, and in this manner the boat is held in place at an angle with the current of the river, which presses against the sides of the boat and becomes its propelling power. We take passage and cross after paying the fare of four *'bits," or, as the uninitiated would say, a half dollar, and then we climb the opposite bank, and keep climbing for a long distance ; but before we reach the high lands we arrive at one of the most beautiful lakes in America, and one which some day will doubtless become one of the most famous, the lovely and wonderful Chelan. It is a ribbon of water seventy miles long, varying in width from a fraction of a mile to five miles. With the single exception of Lake Superior, it is said to be the deepest body of fresh water on the continent. It is set as an amethyst among mountains which rise abruptly on all sides, their reflection on the lucid surface of the lake being seen almost or quite as distinctly as the mountains themselves. At its western end it is fed by the eternal snows of the Cascades, which send down their hundreds of silvery rivulets of cooling water.

Yesterday we were on the dry and dusty plains of the Big Bend country, the almost torrid plateau of the Columbia ; to-day we recognize the hand of the Creator in the grandest scenery nature afifords in this, the Switzerland of America. Such is the land we would describe, but in the description of which we fail, for language fails.

CHAPTER III. The Two Wallas

tf

Walla Walla is the Indian name for "little running waters." This is a beautiful place, in a garden valley of great fertility bearing the same name, where once hunted and dwelt a fierce Indian tribe, fche terrible Cayuses. Forty years ago the government established a fort here, and the maps of a generation ago marked the spot as "Fort Walla Walla." One of the large military posts of the Northwest is still situated at this place. Settlers began to locate here for trading purposes about 1858, since which time this has been the leading town in this part of the country. A thriving town of fifteen thousand people, known as the "Garden City" of the Inland Empire, sits in her beautiful contentment amid other towns on every hand. The Walla Walla Valley, as the country on all sides is known, is a famous section for fruits and grains. Here are produced enor- 31 mous crops of wheat, where for many years it was thought the soil was too dry to grow anything but bunch-grass and weeds. This section and the Paiouse country, which lies a hundred miles to the north, constitute the great wheat belt of Eastern Washington over which people wandered for years, not dreaming it was good for anything but pasture.

Walla Walla is famed not only for its fruit and grain, but is becoming well known as the seat of one of the rising educational institutions of the West. Here is located Whitman College, the living monument to the memory of Dr. Mafcus Whitman, who, with the Rev. Henry Harmon Spaulding, and their young brides, made their wedding trip across the continent two years before Fremont, the more illustrious ''Pathfinder," ever saw Pike's Peak. The wives of Whitman and Spaulding were the first white women to cross the Rockies. This little band of missionaries entered this untried and unknown field under the auspices of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, for this was then looked upon as a foreign field; and indeed

"The Two Wallas." 33

its political ownership was by no means at that time clearly defined. These men and their co-laborers of the Willamette Valley did much toward settling these perplexing questions, and it now looks to us, as we examine the records and turn on the light of history, as though we, as citizens of the United States, owe to the cause of Christian missions the fact that much of the Pacific Northwest is now under the Stars and Stripes. Indeed we can not doubt it ; but this is but a small part of the wonderful outcome of missionary toil in this land.

Dr. Whitman was a physician, a man of great nerve and ability, and a member of the Presbyterian Church. It was in 1836 that this company began their work, just two years after that other band of missionaries under the heroic leadership of Jason Lee, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, having made the journey by way of Cape Horn, began work west of the Cascades in the Willamette Valley. Eleven years later, in 1847, Dr. Whitman and thirteen others, of which number his beloved wife was one, were brutally massacred by the Indians whom they were toil- 3 ing to civilize and save. The work of this company appeared to human sight to have been utterly lost; Dut now, after more than sixty years, we are able to look back, and we clearly see that Marcus Whitman and his co-laborers did not toil in vain.

Dr. Whitman established his headquarters at a point called Waiiletpu, six miles west of where Walla Walla now stands. At this place, and in all the surrounding country, he and his gifted wife toiled unceasingly, giving their lives to the work until they fell the victims of the deluded and cruel red men. After the slaughter, their bodies were laid side by side on the ground, and a large wagon-box was inverted and placed over them by their murderers, and earth was heaped upon it until a mound of considerable size was raised over the dead. This was their humble and insecure sepulcher. Months afterward, when the Indians had been driven back, the militia from the settlements of the Willamette came and found this rude grave had been dug into by coyotes and the bodies mutilated. One of the members of this expedition has described this

"The Two Wallas." 35

scene to the writer, and he tells of gathering up the remains of the victims and reburying them. He saved a quantity of Mrs. Whitman's hair, a part of which he sent to her friends in New York. As I saw this rude grave, on visiting the scene of the slaughter in 1890, it was a moiind of earth, possibly twenty feet long by eight broad, and four or five feet high, and was all grown over with sagebrush and grass, and inclosed by a board fence painted white. Since then a granite shaft has been erected on the spot ; but Whitman College in Walla Walla is the best and most fitting memorial monument to the daring and devoted missionaries. Dr. Marcus Whitman and his wife, Narcissa Prentice Whitman.

Whitman's associate in early missionary labor, and his traveling companion across the continent, the Rev. Henry Harmon Spaulding, began his work about one hundred miles to the east of Waiiletpu, at Lapwai, on the Clearwater River, in what is now the State of Idaho. In 1839 his mission received a present of a printingpress from a Church in the Sandwich Islands, and it was set up and operated at Lapwai, where, so far as is known, was printed the first book in the Northwest. The language used was the Nez Perces, and the book was for the use of the missionaries in instructing the natives. The work in this mission was quite successful, and the natives responded readily to instruction. At the time of the Whitman massacre, Mr. Spaulding was visiting in that part of the country ; but fortunately he was that day at Umatilla, about forty miles distant from the bloody scene, and so escaped the fate which overtook his associates. On learning of the slaughter he started at once for home, where he had left his family, which place he reached after traveling on foot for seven nights ; for he had lost his horse on the way, and he did not dare risk his life by exposing himself by day for fear of Indians. He found his mission in a state of confusion, the savages having plundered it and driven his wife to take refuge with a friendly chief. For a time his mission appears to have been broken up; but he afterwards resumed work, the results of which are still found in all that region. He remained among his people until death, and was lovingly laid to rest in the mis-