Blazing the Way; Or, True Stories, Songs and Sketches of Puget Sound. Denny Emily Inez

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СКАЧАТЬ Bell, a little girl of perhaps ten years, during her stay in the fort exhibited the courage and constancy characterizing even the children in those troublous times.

      She did a great part of the work for the family, cared for her younger sisters, prepared and carried food to her sick mother who was heard to say with tender gratitude, “Your dear little hands have brought me almost everything I have had.” Both have passed into the Beyond; one who remembers Laura well says she was a beautiful, bright, rosy cheeked child, pleasant to look upon.

      In unconscious childhood I was carried into Fort Decatur, on the morning of the battle, yet by careful investigation it has been satisfactorily proven that one lasting impression was recorded upon the palimpsest of my immature mind.

      A shot was accidentally fired from a gun inside the fort, by which a palefaced, dark haired lady narrowly escaped death. The bullet passed through a loop of her hair, below the ear, just beside the white neck. Her hair was dressed in an old fashioned way, parted in the middle on the forehead and smoothly brushed down over the ears, divided and twisted on each side and the two ropes of hair coiled together at the back of the head. Like a flashlight photograph, her face is imprinted on my memory, nothing before or after for sometime can I claim to recall.

      A daughter, the second child of David T. and Louisa Denny, was born in Fort Decatur on the sixteenth of March, 1856, who lived to mature into a gifted and gracious womanhood and passed away from earth in Christian faith and hope on January seventeenth, 1889.

      Other children who remained in the fort for varying periods, were those of the Jones, Kirkland, Lewis, McConaha and Boren families.

      Of the number of settlers who occupied the fort on the day of the battle, the following are nearly, if not quite all, the families: Wm. N. Bell, Mrs. Bell and several young children; John Buckley and Mrs. Buckley; D. A. Neely and family, one of whom was little Sam Neely spoken of elsewhere; Mr. and Mrs. Hillory Butler, gratefully remembered as the best people in the settlement to visit and help the sick; the Holgates, Mrs. and Miss Holgate, Lemuel Holgate, and Milton Holgate who was killed; Timothy Grow, B. L. Johns and six children, whose mother died on the way to Puget Sound; Joe Lake, the Kirkland family, father and several daughters; Wm. Cox and family and D. T. Denny and family.

      During the Indian war, H. L. Yesler took Yoke-Yakeman, or “Denny Jim,” the friendly Indian before mentioned, with him across Lake Washington to the hiding place of the Sammumpsh Indians who were aiding the hostiles. Yesler conferred with them and succeeded in persuading the Indians to come out of their retreat and go across the Sound.

      While returning, Denny Jim met with an accident which resulted fatally. Intending to shoot some ducks, he drew his shotgun toward him, muzzle first, and discharged it, the load entering his arm, making a flesh wound. Through lack of skill, perhaps, in treating it, he died from the effects, in Curley’s house situated on the slope in front of Fort Decatur toward the Bay.

      This Indian and the service he rendered should not be forgotten; the same may be appropriately said of the faithful Spokane of whom the following account has been given by eye witnesses:

      “At the attack of the Cascades of the Columbia, on the 26th of March, 1856, the white people took refuge in Bradford’s store, a log structure near the river. Having burned a number of other buildings, the Indians, Yakimas and Klickitats, attempted to fire the store also; as fast as the shingles were ignited by burning missiles in the hands of the Indians, the first was put out by pouring brine from a pork barrel, with a tin cup, on the incipient blazes, not being able to get any water.

      “The occupants, some wounded, suffered for fresh water, having only some ale and whisky. They hoped to get to the river at night, but the Indians illuminated the scene by burning government property and a warehouse.

      “James Sinclair, who was shot and instantly killed early in the fight, had brought a Spokane Indian with him. This Indian volunteered to get water for the suffering inmates. A slide used in loading boats was the only chance and he stripped off his clothing, slid down to the river and returned with a bucket of water. This was made to last until the 28th, when, the enemy remaining quiet the Spokane repeated the daring performance of going down the slide and returning with a pailful of water, with great expedition, until he had filled two barrels, a feat deserving more than passing mention.”

      On Elliott Bay, the cabins of the farther away settlers had gone up in smoke, fired by the hostile Indians. Some were deserted and new ones built far away from the Sound in the depths of the forest. It required great courage to return to their abandoned homes from the security of the fort, yet doubtless the settlers were glad to be at liberty after their enforced confinement. One pioneer woman says it was easy to see Indians among the stumps and trees around their cabin after the war.

      Many remained in the settlement, others left the country for safer regions, while a few cultivated land under volunteer military guard in order to provide the settlement with vegetables.

      The Yesler mill cookhouse, a log structure, was made historical in those days. The hungry soldiers after a night watch were fed there and rushed therefrom to the battle.

      While there was no church, hotel, storehouse, courthouse or jail it was all these by turns. No doubt those who were sheltered within its walls, ran the whole gamut of human emotion and experience.

      In the Puget Sound Weekly of July 30th, 1866, published in Seattle, it was thus described:

      “There was nothing about this cook house very peculiar, except the interest with which old memories had invested it. It was simply a dingy-looking hewed log building, about twenty-five feet square, a little more than one story high, with a shed addition in the rear, and to strangers and newcomers was rather an eye-sore and nuisance in the place – standing as it did in the business part of the town, among the more pretentious buildings of modern construction, like a quaint octogenarian, among a band of dandyish sprigs of young America. To old settlers, however, its weather-worn roof and smoke-blackened walls, inside and out, were vastly interesting from long familiarity, and many pleasant and perhaps a few unpleasant recollections were connected with its early history, which we might make subjects of a small volume of great interest, had we time to indite it. Suffice it to say, however, that this old cook house was one among the first buildings erected in Seattle; was built for the use of the saw mill many years since, and though designed especially for a cook house, has been used for almost every conceivable purpose for which a log cabin, in a new and wild country, may be employed.

      “For many years the only place for one hundred miles or more along the eastern shores of Puget Sound, where the pioneer settlers could be hospitably entertained by white men and get a square meal, was Yesler’s cook house in Seattle, and whether he had money or not, no man ever found the latch string of the cook house drawn in, or went away hungry from the little cabin door; and many an old Puget Sounder remembers the happy hours, jolly nights, strange encounters and wild scenes he has enjoyed around the broad fireplace and hospitable board of Yesler’s cook house.

      “During the Indian war this building was the general rendezvous of the volunteers engaged in defending the thinly populated country against the depredations of the savages, and was also the resort of the navy officers on the same duty on the Sound. Judge Lander’s office was held in one corner of the dining room; the auditor’s office, for some time, was kept under the same roof, and, indeed, it may be said to have been used for more purposes than any other building on the Pacific coast. It was the general depository from which law and justice were dispensed throughout a large scope of surrounding country. It has, at different times, served for town hall, courthouse, jail, military headquarters, storehouse, hotel and church; and in the early years of its history served all these purposes at once. It was the place of holding elections, and political parties of all sorts held their meetings in it, and quarreled and made friends again, and ate, drank, laughed, sung, wept, and slept under the СКАЧАТЬ