Blazing The Way Part 29

Speaking of the Indians, he tells how they settled around the cabins of the whites at Alki until there were perhaps a thousand, and relates this incident: "On one occasion during the winter, Nelson (Chief Pialse) came with a party of Green River and Muckilshoot Indians, and got into an altercation with John Kanem and the Snoqualmies. They met and the opposing forces, amounting to thirty or forty on a side, drew up directly in front of Low's house, armed with Hudson Bay muskets, the two parties near enough together to have powder-burnt each other, and were apparently in the act of opening fire, when we interposed and restored peace without bloodshed, by my taking John Kanem away and keeping them apart until Nelson and his party left."

His daughter, Lenora Denny, related the same incident to me. She witnessed it as a little child and remembers it perfectly, together with her fright at the preparations for battle, and added that Kanem desired her father at their conference behind the cabin just to let him go around behind the enemy's line of battle and stab their chief; n.o.body would know who did it and that would be sufficient in lieu of the proposed fight. Mr. Denny dissuaded him and the "war" terminated as above stated.

In the fall of 1855, the Indians exhibited more and more hostility toward the whites, and narrow escapes were not uncommon before the war fairly broke out.

About this time as A. A. Denny was making a canoe voyage from Olympia down the Sound he met with a thrilling experience.

When he and his two Indian canoemen were opposite a camp of savages on the beach, they were hailed by the latter with:

"Who is it you have in the canoe and where are you going?" spoken in their native tongue. After calling back and forth for some little time, two of them put out hastily in a canoe to overtake the travelers, keeping up an earnest and excited argument with one of Mr. Denny's Indians, both of whom he observed never ceased paddling. One of the strangers was dressed up in war-paint and had a gun across his lap; he kept up the angry debate with one of the travelers while the other was perfectly silent.

Finally the pursuers were near enough so that one reached out to catch hold of the canoe when Denny's men paddled quickly out of reach and increased their speed to a furious rate, continuing to paddle with all their might until a long distance from their threatening visitors.

Although Mr. Denny did not understand their speech, their voices and gestures were not difficult to interpret; he felt they wished to kill him and thought himself lost.

He afterward learned that his canoeman, who had answered the attacking party, had saved his life by his courage and cunning. The savages from the camp had demanded that Mr. Denny be given up to them that they might kill him in revenge for the killing of some Indians, saying he was a "hyas tyee" (great man) and a most suitable subject for their satisfaction.

He had answered that Mr. Denny was not near so high up nor as great as some others and was always a good friend of the Indians and then carried him to a place of safety by fast and furious paddling. The one who was silent during the colloquy declared afterward that he said nothing for fear they would kill him too.

This exhibition of faithfulness on the part of Indian hirelings is worthy of note in the face of many accusations of treachery on the part of their race.

It is my opinion that Arthur Armstrong Denny led an exemplary life and that he ever desired to do justice to others. If he failed in doing so, it was the fault of those with whom he was a.s.sociated rather than his own.

A leading trait in his character was integrity, another was the modesty that ever accompanies true greatness, noticeable also in his well known younger brother, D. T. Denny; neither has been boastful, arrogant or grasping for public honors.

A. A. Denny fought the long battle of the pioneer faithfully and well and sleeps in an honored grave.

MARY A. DENNY.

Mary Ann Boren (Denny) was born in Tennessee, November 25th, 1822, the first child of Richard Boren and Sarah Latimer Boren (afterward Denny).

Her grandfather Latimer, a kind hearted, sympathetic man, sent a bottle of camphor to revive the pale young mother. This camphor bottle was kept in the family, the children resorting to it for the palliation of cuts and bruises throughout their adolescence, and it is now preserved by her own family as a cherished relic, having seen eighty years and more since its presentation.

After the death of her father, leaving her mother a young widow with three small children, they lived in Illinois as pioneers, where Mary shared the toils, dangers and vicissitudes of frontier life. Was not this the school for the greater pioneering of the farthest west?

November 23rd, 1843, she married Arthur A. Denny, a man who both recognized and acknowledged her worth.

When she crossed the plains in 1851 with the Denny company, Mrs. Denny was a young matron of twenty-nine years, with two little daughters. The journey, arduous to any, was peculiarly trying to her with the helpless ones to care for and make as comfortable as such tenting in the wilds might be.

At Fort Laramie her own feet were so uncomfortable in shoes that she put on a pair of moccasins which David T. Denny had bought of an Indian and worn for one day. Mrs. Denny wore them during the remainder of the journey to Portland.

One incident among many serves to show her unfaltering courage; an Indian reached into her wagon to take the gun hung up inside: Mrs. Mary A. Denny pluckily seized a hatchet and drew it to strike a vigorous blow when the savage suddenly withdrew, doubtless with an increased respect for white squaws in general and this one in particular.

The great journey ended, at Portland her third child, Rolland H., was born. If motherhood be a trial under the most favorable circ.u.mstances, what must it have been on the long march?

On the stormy and dangerous trip from Portland on the schooner Exact, out over the bar and around Cape Flattery to the landing at Alki Point, went the little band with this brave mother and her babe.

On a drizzly day in November, the 13th, 1851, she climbed the bank at Alki Point to the rude cabin, bare of everything now considered necessary to begin housekeeping. They were imperfectly protected from the elements and the eldest child, Catharine, or Kate as she was called, yet remembers how the rain dropped on her face the first night they slept in the unfinished cabin, giving her a decided prejudice against camping out.

The mother's health was poor and it became necessary to provide nourishment for the infant; as there were no cows within reach, or tinned subst.i.tutes, the experiment of feeding him on clam juice was made with good effect.

Louisa Boren Denny, her sister, then unmarried, relates the following incident:

"At Alki Point one day, I stood just within the door of the cabin and Mary stood just inside; both of us saw an Indian bob up from behind the bank and point his gun directly at my sister Mary and almost immediately lower it without firing."

Mary A. Denny, when asked recently what she thought might have been his reason for doing so replied, "Well, I don't know, unless it was just to show what he could do; it was Indian Jim; I suppose he did it to show that he could shoot me if he wanted to."

Probably he thought to frighten her at least, but with the customary nerve of the pioneer woman, she exhibited no sign of fear and he went his way.

They afterward learned that on the same evening there had been some trouble with the Indians at the Maple Place and it was thought that this Indian was one of the disaffected or a sympathizer.

Mrs. Mary A. Denny moved about from place to place, living first in the cabin at Alki Point, then a cabin on Elliott Bay, on the north end of their claim, then another cabin near the great laurel tree, on the site of the Stevens Hotel, Seattle. After a time the family went to Olympia.

Her husband was in the Land Office, was a member of the Territorial Legislature and Delegate to Congress; all the while she toiled on in her home with her growing family.

They returned to Seattle and built what was for those times a very good residence on the corner of Pike Street and First Avenue, where they had a fine orchard, and there they lived many years.

After having struggled through long years of poverty, not extreme, to be sure, but requiring much patient toil and endurance, their property became immensely valuable and they enjoyed well deserved affluence.

Mrs. Mary A. Denny's family consists of four sons and two daughters; Orion O., the second son, was the second white child born in Seattle.

Catherine (Denny) Frye, the elder daughter, was happily married in her girlhood and is the mother of a most interesting family. Rolland H., Orion O., A. Wilson and Charles L. Denny, the four sons, are prominent business men of Seattle.

Mrs. Denny makes her home with Lenora, the younger unmarried daughter, at her palatial residence in Seattle. The last mentioned is a traveled, well read woman of most sympathetic nature, devoted to her friends, one who has shown kindness to many strangers in times past as they were guests in her parents' home.

CHAPTER VII.

HENRY VAN a.s.sELT OF DUWAMISH.

In the Post-Intelligencer of December 8th and 9th, 1902, appeared the following sketches of this well known pioneer:

"At the ripe old age of 85, with the friends.h.i.+p and affection of every man he knew in this life, Henry Van a.s.selt, one of the founders of King County, and one of the four of the first white men to set foot on the sh.o.r.es of Elliott Bay, died yesterday morning at his home, on Fifteenth Avenue, of paralysis. Mr. Van a.s.selt, with Samuel and Jacob Maple and L. M. Collins, landed in a canoe September 14th, 1851, at the mouth of the Duwamish River, where it enters the harbor of Seattle. They had come from the Columbia River and were more than two months in advance of Arthur Denny, one of the pioneer builders of the city of Seattle. Van a.s.selt's name is perpetuated through the town of Van a.s.selt, adjoining the southern limits of the city. He was well known all over the Puget Sound country, and he was the last living member of one of the first bands of white arrivals, on the sh.o.r.es of Elliott Bay.

"Mr. Van a.s.selt was a Hollander, having been born in Holland April 11, 1817, two years after the battle of Waterloo. He was in his early youth a soldier in the Holland army during its dispute with Belgium. An expert marksman and an indefatigable huntsman, he came to America in 1850, on a sailing schooner, and a year later was traveling the trail from the Central West to California. Instead of going to the land of gold and suns.h.i.+ne, Van a.s.selt headed north, reaching the Columbia River in the fall of 1850. A year later found him crossing the Columbia River, after a short sojourn in the mining camps of Northern California.

With three companions, L. M. Collins, Jacob and Samuel Maple, Henry Van a.s.selt made the perilous journey from the Columbia River to the Sound, where, near Olympia, he boarded a canoe, and after two days' traveling reached the mouth of the Duwamish River. Ascending the stream to the junction of the White and Black Rivers, a distance of only a few miles, he staked out a donation land claim of 320 acres in the heart of the richest section of the Duwamish valley."

SAID VALUES INCREASED.

"The st.u.r.dy Hollander cleared the valley of its primeval forest of firs, and made it truly blossom with farm products of every description. The land today (1902) is worth $1,000 an acre and upwards. At his death, the aged pioneer, the last of his generation, had in his own name some 100 odd acres of this land.

Not many weeks ago he had sold twenty-four acres of the old homestead as the site of the new rolling mill and foundry to be constructed by the Vulcan Iron Works.

"Mr. Van a.s.selt was not the least interesting, by any means, of the old pioneers of King County. In fact, until his death he was the last living member of the first group of white men to set foot on the sh.o.r.es of Elliott Bay. He was a very devout man, and in the late years of his life, when he had retired from active business, it was his custom to spend part of every Sunday at the county jail, reading to the prisoners excerpts from holy writ and giving them words of hopefulness and cheer. This duty was performed for many years as regularly as was his attendance at the Methodist Protestant church, in this city, of which he had been for thirty years a member. It is to be said of the dead pioneer that he was universally loved and respected, and it was his proudest boast that he had never made an enemy in his life.

This was literally true.

"Crossing the plains in 1850, young Van a.s.selt was of great a.s.sistance to his party in procuring game and in driving the hostile Indians away, because of his superior marksmans.h.i.+p, which he had acquired as a hunter on the estates of wealthy residents of his native country. He landed at Oregon City, Ore., in September, 1850, and the ensuing winter he spent in mining in California. He acc.u.mulated a considerable sum, and, lured by stories of the richness and vastness of the great Northwest, he returned to Portland in 1851, and, crossing the Columbia, made his way to the Sound country. On this trip he was accidentally wounded, the bullet being imbedded in his shoulder. In the days of the Indian troubles on the Sound, Van a.s.selt was safe from the attacks of the hostiles, who held him in superst.i.tious reverence because of the fact that he carried a bullet in his body. They believed that he could not be killed by a tomahawk. This fact, perhaps, had much to do with his escape from a.s.sa.s.sination at the hands of the hostiles in the Indian war of 1855.

"Jacob and Samuel Maple, who with L. M. Collins accompanied Mr.