Kitabı oku: «Blazing the Way; Or, True Stories, Songs and Sketches of Puget Sound», sayfa 18

In an interview, some interesting facts were elicited.

Angeline saw white people first at Nesqually, “King George” people, the Indians called the Hudson Bay Company’s agents and followers.

She saw the brothers of Pat Kanem arrested for the killing of Wallace; she said that Sealth thought it was right that the two Snoqualmies were executed.

When a little girl she wore deerskin robes or long coats and a collar of shells; in those days her tribe made three kinds of robes, some of “suwella,” “shulth” or mountain beaver fur, and of deer-skins; the third was possibly woven, as they made blankets of mountain sheep’s wool and goat’s hair.

Angeline was first married to a big chief of the Skagits, Dokubkun by name; her second husband was Talisha, a Duwampsh chief. She was a widow of about forty-five when Americans settled on Elliott Bay. Two daughters, Chewatum or Betsy and Mamie, were her only children known to the white people, and both married white men. Betsy committed suicide by hanging herself in the shed room of a house on Commercial Street, tying herself to a rafter by a red bandanna handkerchief. Betsy left an infant son, since grown up, who lived with Angeline many years. Mary or Mamie married Wm. DeShaw and has been dead for some time.

It has been said that some are born great, some achieve greatness, while others have greatness thrust upon them. Of the last described class, Angeline was a shining representative. Souvenir spoons, photographs, and cups bearing her likeness have doubtless traveled over a considerable portion of the civilized world, all of the notoriety arising therefrom certainly being unsought by the poor old Indian woman.

Newspaper reporters, paragraphers, and magazine writers have never wearied of limning her life, recounting even the smallest incidents and making of her a conspicuous figure in the literature of the Northwest.

It quite naturally follows that some absurd things have been written, some heartless, others pathetic and of real literary value, although it has been difficult for the tenderfoot to avoid errors. Upon the event of her death, which occurred on Sunday, May 31st, 1896, a leading paper published an editorial in which a brief outline of the building of the city witnessed by Angeline was given and is here inserted:

“Angeline, as she had been named by the early settlers, had seen many wonders. Born on the lonely shores of an unknown country, reared in the primeval forest, she saw all the progress of modern civilization. She saw the first cabin of the pioneer; the struggles for existence on the part of the white man with nature; the hewing of the log, then the work of the sawmill, the revolt of the aboriginal inhabitants against the intruder and the subjugation of the inferior race; the growth from one hut to a village; from village to town; the swelling population with its concomitants of stores, ships and collateral industries; the platting of a town; the organization of government; the accumulation of commerce; the advent of railroads and locomotives; of steamships and great engines of maritime warfare; the destruction of a town by fire and the marvelous energy which built upon its site, a city. Where there had been a handful of shacks she saw a city of sixty thousand people; in place of a few canoes she saw a great fleet of vessels, stern-wheelers, side-wheelers, propellers, whalebacks, the Charleston and Monterey. She saw the streets lighted by electricity; saw the telephone, elevators and many other wonders.

“Death came to her as it does to all; but it came as the precursor of extinction, it adds another link in the chain which exemplifies the survival of the fittest.”

These comments are coldly judicial and exactly after the mind of the unsympathetic tenderfoot or the “hard case” of early days. In speaking of the “survival of the fittest” and the “subjugation of the inferior race” a contrast is drawn flattering to the white race, but any mention of the incalculable injury, outrages, indignities and villainies practiced upon the native inhabitants by evil white men is carefully avoided. Angeline “saw” a good many other things not mentioned in the above eulogy upon civilization. She saw the wreck wrought by the white man’s drink; the Indians never made a fermented liquor of their own.

Angeline said that her father, Sealth, once owned all the land on which Seattle is built, that he was friendly to the white people and wanted them to have the land; that she was glad to see fine buildings, stores and such like, but not the saloons; she did not like it at all that the white people built saloons and Joe, her grandson, would go to them and get drunk and then they made her pay five dollars to get him out of jail!

However, I will not dwell here on the dark side of the poor Indians’ history, I turn therefore to more pleasant reminiscence.

Ankuti (a great while ago) when the days were long and happy, in the time of wild blackberries, two pioneer women with their children, of whom the writer was one, embarked with Angeline and Mamie in a canoe, under the old laurel (madrona) tree and paddled down Elliott Bay to a fine blackberry patch on W. N. Bell’s claim.

After wandering about a long while they sat down to rest on mossy logs beside the trail. They sat facing the water, the day was waning, and as they thought of their return one of them said, “O look at the canoe!” It was far out on the shining water; the tide had come up while the party wandered in the woods and the canoe, with its stake, was quite a distance from the bank. Mamie ran down the trail to the beach, took off her moccasins and swam out to the canoe, her mother and the rest intently watching her. Then she dived down to the bottom; as her round, black head disappeared beneath the rippling surface, Angeline said “Now she’s gone.” But in a few moments we breathed a sigh of relief as up she rose, having pulled up the stake, and climbed into the canoe, although how she did it one cannot tell, and paddled to the shore to take in the happy crew. This little incident, but more especially the scene, the forms and faces of my friends, the dark forest, moss-cushioned seats under drooping branches, and the graceful canoe afloat on the silvery water – and it did seem for a few, long moments that Mamie was gone as Angeline said in her anxiety for her child’s safety showing she too was a human mother – all this has never left my memory!

Angeline lived for many years in her little shanty near the water front, assisted often with food and clothing from kindly white friends. She had a determination to live, die and be buried in Seattle, as it was her home, and that, too, near her old pioneer friends, thus typifying one of the dearest wishes of the Indians.

She was one of the good Indian washerwomen, gratefully remembered by pioneer housewives. These faithful servitors took on them much toil, wearing and wearisome, now accomplished by machinery or Chinese.

The world is still deceived by the external appearance; but even the toad “ugly and venomous” was credited with a jewel in its head.

Now Angeline was ugly and untidy, and all that, but not as soulless as some who relegated her to the lowest class of living creatures.

A white friend whom she often visited, Mrs. Sarah Kellogg, said to the writer, “Angeline lived up to the light she had; she was honest and would never take anything that was offered her unless she needed it. I always made her some little present, saying, ‘Well, Angeline, what do you want? Some sugar?’ ‘No, I have plenty of sugar, I would like a little tea.’ So it was with anything else mentioned, if she was supplied she said so. I had not seen her for quite a while at one time, and hearing she was sick sent my husband to the door of her shack to inquire after her. Sure enough she lay in her bunk unable to rise. When asked if she wanted anything to eat, she replied, ‘No, I have plenty of muck-amuck; Arthur Denny sent me a box full, but I want some candles and matches.’

“She told me that she was getting old and might die any time and that she never went to bed without saying her prayers.

“During a long illness she came to my house quite often, but was sent away by those in charge; when I was at last able to sit up, I saw her approaching the house and went down to the kitchen to be ready to receive her. As usual I inquired after her wants, when she somewhat indignantly asked, ‘Don’t you suppose I can come to see you without wanting something?’

“One day as she sat in my kitchen a young white girl asked before her, in English, of course, ‘Does Angeline know anything about God?’ She said quickly in Chinook, ‘You tell that girl that I know God sees me all the time; I might lie or steal and you would never find it out, but God would see me do it.’”

In her old age she exerted herself, even when feeble from sickness, to walk long distances in quest of food and other necessities, stumping along with her cane and sitting down now and then on a door-step to rest.

All the trades-people knew her and were generally kind to her.

At last she succumbed to an attack of lung trouble and passed away. Having declared herself a Roman Catholic, she was honorably buried from the church in Seattle, Rev. F. X. Prefontaine officiating, while several of the old pioneers were pallbearers.

A canoe-shaped coffin had been prepared on which lay a cross of native rhododendrons and a cluster of snowballs, likely from an old garden. A great concourse of people were present, many out of curiosity, no doubt, while some were there with real feeling and solemn thought. Her old friend, Mrs. Maynard, stood at the head of the grave and dropped in a sprig of cedar. She spoke some encouraging words to Joe Foster, Betsy’s son, and Angeline’s sole mourner, advising him to live a good life.

And so Angeline was buried according to her wish, in the burying ground of the old pioneers.

YUTESTID

After extending numerous invitations, I was pleasantly surprised upon my return to my home one day to find Mr. and Mrs. Yutestid awaiting an interview.

In the first place this Indian name is pronounced Yute-stid and he is the only survivor (in 1898) of Chief Sealth’s once numerous household. His mother was doubtless a captive, a Cowichan of British Columbia; his father, a Puget Sound Indian from the vicinity of Olympia. He was quite old, he does not know how old, but not decrepit; Angeline said they grew up together.

He is thin and wiry looking, with some straggling bristles for a beard and thick short hair, still quite black, covering a head which looks as if it had been flattened directly on top as well as back and front as they were wont to do. This peculiar cranial development does not affect his intelligence, however, as we have before observed in others; he is quick-witted and knows a great many things. Yutestid says he can speak all the leading dialects of the Upper Sound, Soljampsh, Nesqually, Puyallup, Snoqualmie, Duwampsh, Snohomish, but not the Sklallam and others north toward Vancouver.

Several incidents related in this volume were mentioned and he remembered them perfectly, referred to the naming of “New York” on Alki Point and the earliest settlement, repeating the names of the pioneers. The murder at Bean’s Point was committed by two Soljampsh Indians, he said, and they were tried and punished by an Indian court.

He remembers the hanging of Pat Kanem’s brothers, Kussass and Quallawowit.

“Long ago, the Indians fight, fight, fight,” he said, but he declared he had never heard of the Duwampsh campaign attributed to Sealth.

Yutestid was not at the battle of Seattle but at Oleman House with Sealth’s tribe and others whom Gov. Stevens had ordered there. He chuckled as he said “The bad Indians came into the woods near town and the man-of-war (Decatur) mamoked pooh (shot) at them and they were frightened and ran away.”

Lachuse, the Indian who was shot near Seneca Street, Seattle, he remembered, and when I told him how the Indian doctor extracted the buckshot from the wounds he sententiously remarked, “Well, sometimes the Indian doctors did very well, sometimes they were old humbugs, just the same as white people.”

Oleman House was built long before he was born, according to his testimony, and was adorned by a carved wooden figure, over the entrance, of the great thunder bird, which performed the office of a lightning rod or at least prevented thunder bolts from striking the building.

When asked what the medium of exchange was “ankuti” (long ago), he measured on the index finger the length of pieces of abalone shell formerly used for money.

In those days he saw the old women make feather robes of duck-skins, also of deer-skins and dog-skins with the hair on; they made bead work, too; beaded moccasins called “Yachit.”

The old time ways were very slow; he described the cutting of a huge cedar for a canoe as taking a long time to do, by hacking around it with a stone hammer and “chisel.”

Before the advent of the whites, mats served as sails.

I told him of having seen the public part of Black Tamanuse and they both laughed at the heathenism of long ago and said, “We don’t have that now.”

Yutestid denied that his people ate dog when making black tamanuse, but said the Sklallams did so.

“If I could speak better English or you better Chinook I could tell you lots of stories,” he averred. Chinook is so very meager, however, that an interpreter of the native tongue will be necessary to get these stories.

They politely shook hands and bade me “Good-bye” to jog off through the rain to their camping place, Indian file, he following in the rear contentedly smoking a pipe. Yutestid is industrious, cultivating a patch of ground and yearly visiting the city of Seattle with fruit to sell.

THE CHIEF’S REPLY

 
Yonder sky through ages weeping
Tender tears o’er sire and son,
O’er the dead in grave-banks sleeping,
Dead and living loved as one,
May turn cruel, harsh and brazen,
Burn as with a tropic sun,
But my words are true and changeless,
Changeless as the season’s run.
 
 
Waving grass-blades of wide prairie
Shuttled by lithe foxes wary,
As the eagle sees afar,
So the pale-face people are;
Like the lonely scattering pine-trees
On a bleak and stormy shore,
Few my brother warriors linger
Faint and failing evermore.
 
 
Well I know you could command us
To give o’er the land we love,
With your warriors well withstand us
And ne’er weep our graves above.
See on Whulch the South wind blowing
And the waves are running free!
Once my people they were many
Like the waves of Whulch’s sea.
 
 
When our young men rise in anger,
Gather in a war-bent band,
Face black-painted and the musket
In the fierce, relentless hand,
Old men pleading, plead in vain,
Their dark spirits none restrain.
 
 
If to you our land we barter,
This we ask ere set of sun,
To the graves of our forefathers,
Till our days on earth are done,
We may wander as our hearts are
Wandering till our race is run.
 
 
Speak the hillsides and the waters,
Speak the valleys, plains and groves,
Waving trees and snow-robed mountains,
Speak to him where’er he roves,
To the red men’s sons and daughters
Of their joys, their woes and loves.
By the shore the rocks are ringing
That to you seem wholly dumb,
Ever with the waves are singing,
Winds with songs forever come;
Songs of sorrow for the partings
Death and time make as of yore,
Songs of war and peace and valor,
Red men sang on Whulch’s shore.
See! the ashes of our fathers,
Mingling dust beneath our feet,
Common earth to you, the strangers,
Thrills us with a longing sweet.
Fills our pulses rhythmic beat.
At the midnight in your cities
Empty seeming, silent streets
Shall be peopled with the hosts
Of returning warriors’ ghosts.
Tho’ I shall sink into the dust,
My warning heed; be kind, be just,
Or ghosts shall menace and avenge.
 

PART III.
INDIAN LIFE AND SETTLERS’ BEGINNINGS

CHAPTER I.
SAVAGE DEEDS OF SAVAGE MEN

At Bean’s Point, opposite Alki on Puget Sound, an Indian murdered, at night, a family of Indians who were camping there.

The Puyallups and Duwampsh came together in council at Bean’s Point, held a trial and condemned and executed the murderer. Old Duwampsh Curley was among the members of this native court and likely Sealth and his counsellors.

One of the family escaped by wading out into the water where he might have become very cool, if not entirely cold, if it had not been that Captain Fay and George Martin, a Swedish sailor, were passing by in their boat and the Indian begged to be taken in, a request they readily granted and landed him in a place of safety.

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 passed 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 tamanuse 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-fashioned 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 tamanuse music, as Lachuse finally recovered.

The revengeful deed was committed by a Port Washington 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 massacre, 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 assault, 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 washing 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 passed outside.

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

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

“The Snoqualmies as they retreated to the beach killed two Indian ponies and then hastily departed in their canoes.

“At the commencement of the shooting, Pat Kanem, guided by Wyampch, escaped from the fort, a fortunate occurrence, as, upon his rejoining his party the retreat at once began.

“When Dr. Tolmie stooped to raise Wallace, and the Snoqualmies levelled their guns to kill that old and revered friend, an Indian called ‘the Priest’ pushed aside the guns, exclaiming ‘Enough mischief has already been done.’

“The four Indians of the Snoqualmie party whose names were given by Snohomish informers to Dr. Tolmie, together with Kussass and Quallawowit, were afterward tried for the murder of Wallace.”

Their names were Whyik, Quallawowit, Kussass, Stahowie, Tatetum and Quilthlimkyne; the last mentioned was a Duwampsh.

Eighty blankets were offered for the giving up of these Indians.

The Snoqualmies came to Steilacoom, where they were to be tried, in war paint and parade.

The officials came from far; down the Columbia; up the Cowlitz, and across to Puget Sound, about two hundred miles in primitive style, by canoe, oxcart or cayuse.

The trial occupied two days; on the third day, the two condemned, Kussass and Quallawowit, were executed.

One shot Wallace, two Indians were hung; Leschi, a leader in the subsequent war of 1855, looked on and went away resenting the injustice of taking two lives for one. Other Indians no doubt felt the same, thus preparing the way for their deadly opposition to the white race.

It certainly seems likely that the “pretext” of the Snoqualmies was a valid one as Wyampch, the young Nesqually chief, was a drunkard, and Why-it, his Snoqualmie wife, was no doubt treated much as Indian wives generally in such a case, frequently beaten and kicked into insensibility.

The Snoqualmies had been quarreling with the Nesquallies before this and it is extremely probable that, as was currently reported among old settlers, the trouble was among the Indians themselves.

There are two stories also concerning Wallace; first, that he was outside quietly looking on, which he ought to have known better than to do; second, that he was warned not to go outside but persisted in going, boasting that he could settle the difficulty with a club, paying for his temerity with his life.

A well known historian has said that the “different tribes had been successfully treated with, but the Indians had acted treacherously inasmuch as it was well known that they had long been plotting against the white race to destroy it. This being true and they having entered upon a war without cause, however, he (Gov. Stevens) might sympathize with the restlessness of an inferior race who perceived that destiny was against them, he nevertheless had high duties toward his own.”

Now all this was true, yet there were other things equally true. Not all the treachery, not all the revenge, not all the cruelty were on the side of the “inferior” race. Even all the inferiority was not on one side. The garbled translation by white interpreters, the lying, deceit, nameless and numberless impositions by lawless white men must have aroused and fostered intense resentment. That there were white savages here we have ample proof.

When Col. Wright received the conquered Spokane chiefs in council with some the pipe of peace was smoked. After it was over, Owhi presented himself and was placed in irons for breaking an agreement with Col. Wright, who bade him summon his son, Qualchin, on pain of death by hanging if his son refused to come.

The next day Qualchin appeared not knowing that the order had been given, and was seized and hung without trial. Evidently Kamiakin, the Yakima chief, had good reason to fear the white man’s treachery when he refused to join in the council.

The same historian before mentioned tells how Col. Wright called together the Walla Wallas, informed them that he knew that they had taken part in recent battles and ordered those who had to stand up; thirty-five promptly rose. Four of these were selected and hung. Now these Indians fought for home and country and volunteered to be put to death for the sake of their people, as it is thought by some, those hung for the murder of Whitman and his companions, did, choosing to do so of their own free will, not having been the really guilty ones at all.

Quiemuth, an Indian, after the war, emerged from his hiding place, went to a white man on Yelm prairie requesting the latter to accompany him to Olympia that he might give himself up for trial. Several persons went with him; reached Olympia after midnight, the governor placed him in his office, locking the door. It was soon known that the Indian was in the town and several white men got in at the back door of the building. The guard may have been drowsy or their movements very quiet; a shot was fired and Quiemuth and the others made a rush for the door where a white man named Joe Brannan stabbed the Indian fatally, in revenge for the death of his brother who had been killed by Indians some time before.

Three of the Indian leaders in Western Washington were assassinated by white men for revenge. Leschi, the most noted of the hostile chiefs on the Sound, was betrayed by two of his own people, some have said.

I have good authority for saying that he gave himself up for fear of a similar fate.

He was tried three times before he was finally hung after having been kept in jail a long time. Evidently there were some obstructionists who agreed with the following just and truthful statement by Col. G. O. Haller, a well-known Indian fighter, first published in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

“The white man’s aphorism ‘The first blow is half the battle,’ is no secret among Indians, and they practice it upon entering a war. Indeed, weak nations and Indian tribes, wrought to desperation by real or fancied grievances, inflict while able to do so horrible deeds when viewed by civilized and Christ-like men. War is simply barbarism. And when was war refined and reduced to rules and regulations that must control the Indian who fights for all that is dear to him – his native land and the graves of his sires – who finds the white man’s donation claim spread over his long cultivated potato patch, his hog a trespasser on his old pasture ground and his old residence turned into a stable for stock, etc.?

“Leschi, like many citizens during the struggle for secession, appealed to his instincts – his attachment to his tribe – his desire, at the same time to conform to the requirements of the whites, which to many of his people were repulsive and incompatible. He decided and struck heavy blows against us with his warriors. Since then we have learned a lesson.

“Gen. Lee inflicted on the Union army heavy losses of life and destruction of property belonging to individuals. When he surrendered his sword agreeing to return to his home and become a law-abiding citizen, Gen. Grant protected him and his paroled army from the vengeance of men who sought to make treason odious. This was in 1866 and but the repetition of the Indian war of 1856.

“Col. Geo. Wright, commanding the department of the Columbia, displayed such an overwhelming force in the Klickitat country that it convinced the hostile Indians of the hopelessness of pursuing war to a successful issue, and when they asked the terms of peace, Col. Wright directed them to return to their former homes, be peaceful and obey the orders of the Indian agents sent by our government to take charge of them, and they would be protected by the soldiers.

“The crimes of war cannot be atoned by crimes in cold blood after the war. Two wrongs do not make a right.

“Leschi, though shrewd and daring in war, adopted Col. Wright’s directions, dropped hostilities, laid aside his rifle and repaired to Puget Sound, his home.

“Like Lee, he was entitled to protection from the officers and soldiers. But Leschi, on the Sound, feared the enmity of the whites, and gave himself up to Dr. Tolmie, an old friend, at Nesqually – not captured by two Indians of his own tribe and delivered up. Then began a crusade against Leschi for all the crimes of his people in war.

“On the testimony of a perjured man, whose testimony was demonstrated, by a survey of the route claimed by the deponent, to be a falsehood, he was found guilty by the jury, not of the offense alleged against him, for it was physically impossible for Leschi to be at the two points indicated in the time alleged; hence he was a martyr to the vengeance of unforgiving white men.”

I remember having seen the beautiful pioneer woman spoken of in the following account first published in a Seattle paper. The Castos were buried in the old burying ground in a corner next the road we traveled from our ranch to school.