Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail Part 16

Three neighbors were all we had, and the nearest lived nearly two miles away. Two of them kept bachelor's hall. The thick, high timber made it impossible for us to see any of our neighbors' houses. We could reach only one by a road; to the others we might go by a trail. Under such conditions we could not have a public school. This, however, did not keep us from having a school of our own.

One day one of our farther-off neighbors, who lived more than four miles away, came to visit us. Naturally the children flocked around him to hear his stories in broad Scotch and to ply him with questions. In his turn, he began to ask them questions. One of these was, "When do you expect to go to school?"

"Oh, we have school now," responded the children. "We have school every day."

"And pray, who is your teacher, and where is your schoolhouse?"

"Father teaches us at home every morning before breakfast. He hears the lessons then, and mother helps us too."

"Your father told me a while ago that you had your breakfast at six o'clock. What time do you get up?"

"Why, father sets the clock for half-past four, and that gives us an hour while mother gets breakfast, you know."

Boys and girls of today may pity those poor pioneer children who had to get up so early. They may as well dismiss such feelings from their hearts. The children were cheerful and healthy; they did some work during the day in addition to studying their lessons; and besides they went to bed earlier than some boys and girls do these days.

In January 1861 the wreck of the steamer _Northerner_ brought great sorrow to us, for my brother Oliver was among those lost. The s.h.i.+p struck on an uncharted rock.

During the stay at Steilacoom in the time of the Indian troubles, we had begun a trading venture, in a small way. The venture having proved successful, we invested all our savings in a new stock of merchandise, and this stock, not all paid for, went down with the s.h.i.+p. Again we must start in life, and we moved to a new location, a homestead in the Puyallup valley. Here we lived and farmed for forty-one years, seeing the town of Puyallup grow up on and around the homestead.

In the Puyallup valley there were more neighbors--two families to the square mile. Yet no neighbors were in sight, because the timber and underbrush were so thick we could scarcely see two rods from the edge of our clearing. But the neighbors were near enough for us to provide a public school and build a schoolhouse.

Some of the neighbors took their axes to cut the logs, some their oxen to drag them, others their saws and cleaving tools to make clapboards for the roof. Others again, more handy with tools, made the benches out of split logs, or, as we called them, puncheons. With willing hands to help, the schoolhouse soon received the finis.h.i.+ng touches.

The side walls were scarcely high enough for the doorway, so one was cut in the end. The door hung on wooden hinges, which squeaked a good deal when the door was opened or shut; but the children did not mind that.

The roof answered well enough for the ceiling overhead, and a cut in one of the logs on each side made two long, narrow windows for light. The children sat with their faces to the walls, with long shelves in front of them, while the smaller tots sat on low benches near the middle of the room. When the weather would permit, the teacher left the door open to admit more light. There was no need to let in more fresh air, as the roof was quite open and the cracks between the logs let in plenty of it.

Sometimes we had a woman for teacher, and then the salary was smaller, as she boarded around. That meant some discomfort for her during part of the time, where the surroundings were not pleasant.

One day little Carrie, my daughter, started to go to school, but soon came running back out of breath.

"Mamma! Mamma! I saw a great big cat sharpening his claws on a great big tree, just the way p.u.s.s.y does!" she said as soon as she could catch her breath.

Sure enough, upon examination, there were the marks of a cougar as high up on the tree as I could reach. It must have been a big one to reach so far up the tree. But the incident soon dropped out of mind and the children went to school on the trail as if nothing had happened.

Afterwards I met a cougar on a lonely trail in the woods near where Auburn now stands. I had been attempting to drive some wild cattle home, but they were so unruly that they scattered through the timber and I was obliged to go on without them late in the day. The forest was so dense that it was hard to see the road even when the sun was s.h.i.+ning; on a cloudy day it seemed almost like night, though I could see well enough to keep on the crooked trail.

Just before I got to Stuck River crossing I came to a turn in the trail where it crossed the top of a big fir that had been turned up by the roots and had fallen nearly parallel with the trail. The big roots held the b.u.t.t of the tree up from the ground. I think the tree was four feet in diameter a hundred feet from the b.u.t.t, and the whole body, from root to top, was eighty-four steps long, or about two hundred and fifty feet.

I didn't stop to step it then. But you may be sure I took some pretty long strides about that time; for just as I stepped over the fallen tree near the top, I saw something move on the big body near the roots. The thing was coming right towards me. In an instant I realized that it was a great cougar. He was pretty, but he did not look especially pleasing to me.

I didn't know what to do. I had no gun with me, and I knew perfectly well there was no use to run. Was I scared, did you say? Did you ever have creepers run up your back and right to the roots of your hair, and nearly to the top of your head?

Did the cougar hurt me? If I had been hurt I shouldn't have been here to tell you this story. The fun of it was that the cougar hadn't seen me yet, but as soon as he did he scampered off as if the Old Harry himself were after him, while I sped off down the trail as if old Beelzebub were after me.

But no wild animals ever harmed us, and we did not die for want of food, clothing, or shelter, although we did have some experiences that were trying. Before the clearings were large we sometimes were pinched for both food and clothing. I will not say we suffered much for either, though I know that some families at times lived on potatoes, straight.

Usually fish could be had in abundance, and there was considerable game--some bear and plenty of deer.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Christmas tree with its homemade gifts.]

The clothing gave us more trouble, as but little money came to us for the small quant.i.ty of produce we had to spare. I remember one winter when we were at our wits' ends for shoes. We just could not get money to buy shoes enough to go around, but we managed to get leather to make each member of the family one pair. We killed a pig to get bristles for the wax-ends, cut the pegs from alder log and seasoned them in the oven, and made the lasts out of the same timber. Those shoes were clumsy, to be sure; but they kept our feet dry and warm, and we felt thankful for them and sorry for some neighbors' children, who had to go barefooted even in quite cold weather. Carrie once had a pair of nice white shoes "for best," I remember, that one of her brothers made for her, with buckskin uppers and light tan-colored soles.

You must not think that we had no recreation and that we were a sorrowful set. There was never a happier lot of people than these same hard-working pioneers and their families. We had joy in our home life, and amus.e.m.e.nts as well as labor.

Music was our greatest pleasure. We never tired of it. "Uncle John," as every one called him, the old teacher, was constantly teaching the children music; so it soon came about they could read their music as readily as they could their school books.

No Christmas ever went by without a Christmas tree, at which the whole neighborhood joined. The Fourth of July was never pa.s.sed without a celebration. We made the presents for the tree if we could not buy them, and supplied the musicians, reader, and orator for the celebration.

Everybody had something to do and a voice in saying what should be done, and that very fact made all happy.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Brown Bros._

A dairy farm in Was.h.i.+ngton, where once the forest stood.]

It was sixteen miles to our market town, Steilacoom, over the roughest kind of road. n.o.body had horse teams at the start; we had to go with ox teams. We could not make the trip out and back in one day, and we did not have money to pay hotel bills. We managed in this way: we would drive out part of the way and camp; the next morning we would drive into town very early, do our trading, and if possible, drive back home the same day. If not able to do this, we camped on the road again. But if the night was not too dark we would reach home that night. And oh, what an appet.i.te we would have, and how bright the fire would be, and how joyous the welcome in the cabin home!

The trees and stumps are all gone now and brick buildings and other good houses occupy much of the land. As many people now live in that school district as lived both east and west of the mountains when the Territory was created in March of 1853. Instead of going in ox teams, or even sleds, the people have carriages or automobiles; they can travel on any of the eighteen pa.s.senger trains that pa.s.s daily through Puyallup, or on street cars to Tacoma, and also on some of the twenty to twenty-four freight trains, some of which are a third of a mile long. Such are some of the changes wrought in fifty years since pioneer life began in the Puyallup valley.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A hop field with the hops ready for picking.]

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

FINDING AND LOSING A FORTUNE

OUR youthful dream of becoming farmers was now realized in fullest measure. The clearing was gradually enlarged, and abundant crops came to reward our efforts. The comfort and plenty we had hoped and struggled for was attained. Next came a development in the family fortunes that we had not dreamed of. Never had we thought to see the Meeker family conducting a business that would require a London office.

This unexpected prosperity came to us through the hop-growing industry, upon which we entered with all our force. The business was well started by the time of my father's death in 1869, and in the fifteen years following the acreage planted to hops was increased until the crop-yield of 1882, a yield of more than seventy-one tons, gave the Puyallup valley the banner crop, as to quant.i.ty, of the United States--and, some persons a.s.serted, of the world.

The public, generally, gave me the credit of introducing hop culture into the Northwest. Therefore it seems fitting to tell here the story of the beginnings of an industry that came to have great importance.

In March of 1865, Charles Wood of Olympia sent about three pecks of hop roots to Steilacoom for my father, Jacob R. Meeker, who then lived on his claim in the Puyallup valley. John V. Meeker, my brother, pa.s.sed by my cabin when he carried the sack of roots on his back from Steilacoom to my father's home, a distance of about twenty miles, and from the sack I took roots enough to plant six hills of hops. As far as I know those were the first hops planted in the Puyallup valley. My father planted the remainder, and in the following September harvested the equivalent of one bale of hops, 180 pounds. This was sold for eighty-five cents a pound, or a little more than a hundred and fifty dollars for the bale.

This sum was more money than had been received by any of the settlers in the Puyallup valley, except perhaps two, from the products of their farms for that year. My father's near neighbors obtained a barrel of hop roots from California the next year, and planted them the following spring--four acres. I obtained what roots I could get that year, but not enough to plant an acre. The following year (1867) I planted four acres, and for twenty-six successive years thereafter we added to the area planted, until our holdings reached past the five-hundred-acre mark and our production was more than four hundred tons a year.

None of us knew anything about the hop business, and it was entirely by accident that we engaged in it. But seeing that there were possibilities of great gain, I took pains to study hop culture, and found that by allowing our hops to mature thoroughly, curing them at a low temperature, and baling them while hot, we could produce hops that would compete with any product in the world. Others of my neighbors planted them, and so did many people in Oregon, until soon there came to be a field for purchasing and s.h.i.+pping hops. But the fluctuations in price were so great that in a few years many growers became discouraged and lost their holdings.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The site of the cabin home in Puyallup is now Pioneer Park, Ezra Meeker's gift to the city that he founded. In it still stands the ivy vine that for fifty years grew over the cabin.]

Finally, during the failure of the world's hop crop in the year 1882, there came to be unheard-of prices for hops, and fully one third of the crop of the Puyallup valley was sold for a dollar a pound. I had that year nearly one hundred thousand pounds, which brought an average of seventy cents a pound.

My first hop house was built in 1868--a log house. It still stands in Pioneer Park in Puyallup. We frequently employed more than a thousand people during harvest time. Many of these were Indians, some of whom would come for a thousand miles down the coast from British Columbia and even the confines of Alaska; they came in the great cedar-log canoes manned with twenty paddlers or more. For the most part I managed my Indian workers very easily. Once I had to tie up two of them to a tree for getting drunk; their friends came and stole away the prisoners--which was what I intended they should do.

It was in 1870, eighteen years after my arrival from across the Plains, that I made my first return journey to the States. I had to go through the mud to the Columbia River, then out over the bar to the Pacific Ocean, and down to San Francisco. Then there was the seven days' journey over the Central and Union Pacific and connecting lines; this meant sitting bolt upright all the way, for there were no sleeping cars then, and no diners either.