"So Fair a Dwelling Place": A History of Olympia and Thurston County Washington


By Gordon Newell

Olympia: Olympia News Publishing, 1950.


Electronically Transcribed 2001.
By Edward Echtle  ThurstonHistory@earthlink.net


Note: transcription retains errors appearing in the original text, and no doubt includes a few 
added in the transcription process.  Please check unclear passages against an original copy.




p7

THE MAP MAKERS 

	The sea changes but little and in 1841, as today, the ocean gateways to the Par 
West were not always hospitable to the stranger seeking a landfall. The squadron of 
Lieutenant Charles Wilkes, acting Commodore, U.S.N., 33 months out of Norfolk by way 
of Antarctic, South Pacific and California, lay hove-to off the mouth of the Columbia. 
	It was April 28, and the bar was breaking. Great seas flung themselves against the 
rock bulwark of Cape Disappointment and foamed outward over the unnamed sand-spit at 
its base. To the South, seas broke on the sands of Clatsop Spit, and they, too, roared 
outward toward the channel. Where they met with the cracking of titanic whips, the bar 
itself was a seething maelstrom of churning, sand-filled water. 
	Lieutenant Wilkes was not a timid man. He it was who, 20 years later, almost 
precipitated war between the United States and England when he stopped a British mail 
steamer on the high seas and removed from her the Confederate commissioners, Mason 
and Slidell. 
	But the Great River of the West is treacherous as it meets the sea and not to be 
taken lightly at the best of times. The brig Porpoise was standing in dangerously close to 
the nameless sands at Disappointment's foot. Signal flags soared to the Vincennes' mizzen, 
and the little squadron squared away to the north, rolling up the northern coast of the 
Oregon Territory. 
	Two days later, on May 1, the squadron raised Cape Flattery; the yards were braced 
round and the ships swept past the tall rock, Tatoosh. The seamen watched smoke climb 
from the Indian villages and the Indians watched the first American government vessels 
sail into American waters in the Pacific Northwest. 
	Captain George Vancouver had sailed these waters 49 years earlier, in command of 
His Majesty's sloop, Discovery, and the armed tender, Chatham. Off the coast, he had met 
the Yankee merchant skipper Robert Gray on the ship Columbia. 
	From this meeting, the Discovery and Chatham sailed north to discover and chart 
the waters of Puget Sound. The Columbia sailed south to discover and chart the waters of 
Grays Harbor and the Columbia. 
	For countless centuries the far Northwest had remained a trackless territory. In the 
space of a few weeks, Vancouver and Gray placed the present coast of Washington in the 
well-mapped atlas of exact knowledge. 
	Vancouver and Gray, in 1792, were the true pioneers of the far Northwest, but it is 
Wilkes the last of the explorers, who has left his mark most deeply on the headlands and 
inlets of the upper Sound. 
	Vancouver and his lieutenant, Peter Puget, spent but little time in the Discovery's 
launch and yawl south of Vashon's Island, which Vancouver named for another of his 
officers. 


p8

	Mount Rainier and Discovery Bay, Admiralty Inlet, Hoods Canal, Elliott Bay and 
Dungeness they named for British ships and seamen and British villages, but it remained 
for Wilkes thoroughly to chart and name the shores and bays of the southern tip of Puget 
Sound. 
	The geography of these shores is well sprinkled with good American names from 
the muster-lists of Wilkes' ships. Hartstene Island he named for his first lieutenant, H. J. 
Hartstene. Henderson, Eld, Totten and Hammersley Inlets bear the names of Wilkes' 
officers, as does Budd Inlet, the harbor of Olympia. Beautiful Drayton Passage, off 
Anderson Island, was fittingly enough named for Joseph Drayton, the expedition's artist. A 
half hundred or more points and capes, from Olympia to the San Juans, were likewise 
named by Wilkes, and most of those names remain to this day. 
	Two English names were given to islands of the upper Sound by Wilkes, however. 
Anderson Island and McNeil Island were named for officers of the Hudson's Bay 
Company, who entertained the Americans at Nisqually and served as pilots aboard the 
squadron flagship on the upper Sound.


p9

	The Hudson's Bay men knew the waterways well. As early as 1824 an expedition 
left Astoria for the Puget Sound country. Led by James McMillan, it made its way by 
canoe and portage from the Columbia River to Grays Harbor. Through a dark and tangled 
wilderness, it paddled its way through November rains up the Chehalis River to the Black 
River, up the Black River to its headwaters in Black Lake, just west of the present site of 
Olympia. From there the men portaged to Eld Inlet and made their way up Puget Sound to 
the Fraser River. 
	Upon their return, the group divided at the Chehalis, one group returning to Astoria 
by the route they had come, the other traveling overland to the Cowlitz River near the 
present site of Toledo and down that stream to the Columbia. This route became the famed 
Cowlitz Trail, over which the first American settlers were later to pour into the Puget 
Sound country. 

	In the spring of 1833, the company sent Archibald McDonald to establish a trading 
post at Nisqually, and when this fortress-store was occupied, the old circuitous route to the 
Columbia River by way of Black Lake, the Chehalis River and Grays Harbor fell into 
disuse. The Cowlitz Trail was the accepted land entrance to the new frontier. 
	The Englishmen took leave of Wilkes when he received word of the loss of one of 
his sloops which he had dispatched to the Columbia River. It had stranded on those 
treacherous sands below Cape Disappointment, and the sands had received a name, along 
with the bones, of the U.S.S. Peacock. Peacock Spit has claimed many proud ships in the 
100 or more years since then. 
	Wilkes never returned to Puget Sound. The Hudson's Bay post at Nisqually was 
eight years old when the American squadron arrived. It was to remain for 30 more ... until 
1870, but it was free of American visitors and competitors for less than five years of that 
thirty. 


THE EMPIRE BUILDERS 

	In April, 1845, a covered wagon train stopped at Washougal while a baby was born 
to Mrs. Michael Simmons ... the first white child to be born north of the Columbia. Then 
the train pushed on over the Cowlitz Trail to the Falls of the DesChutes, called Tumwater 
by the Indians. 
	Colonel Michael T. Simmons was a Kentucky man who didn't like to be crowded. 
He had a taste for danger and a way with savages.  George Bush was a Negro - a very light 
mulatto, but, by the harsh judgement of slave days, a free Negro. He was making the age-
old search of his race for tolerance and a place where he could be a free man... not a free 
Negro.


p10

	James McAllister wanted a lot of land where he could raise big crops and a big 
family in peace and security. With them came David Kindred and Gabriel Jones, with their 
families, and two single men, Jesse Ferguson and Samuel Crockett. 
	Peter Bercier had guided them from the last outpost of American civilization on the 
Columbia. They were met on the way by a big Nisqually Indian, whose homely, kind face 
smiled a great welcome to his people's land. The Indian's name was Leschi, and he gave 
more than a welcome to the settlers. He had brought them pack-horse loads of badly 
needed supplies. 

	Colonel Simmons stayed at Tumwater, staked a claim, and named his new town 
New Market. He was letting the Hudson's Bay men know that they had a new market to 
contend with. It took a quarter of a century, but the new market finally triumphed over the 
old one at Nisqually. This was the first American settlement in what is now Western 
Washington. 
	Using water power from the falls, he built a saw mill and grist mill - Washington's 
first industries used water power, as do her newest. It was Simmons, too, who founded the 
state's great oyster industry. The hills of Kentucky hadn't given the Colonel much in the 
way of an education and historians have called him illiterate. 
	He was actually a self-educated man of considerable intelligence. A natural 
linguist, he became fluent in the Indian languages and was later of great assistance to 
Governor Stevens in dealing with the Puget Sound tribes. 


p11

	Michael Simmons was first in many things, but like most of the true pioneers he 
reaped little financial reward from the enterprises he started. 

	Bush, too, was a man of intelligence and character and had done well in a world 
where all the cards were stacked against him. When he unpacked his goods he removed a 
false bottom from his wagon. The boards below were neatly covered with silver dollars, 
laid edge to edge. 
	Because the Bush family were officially Negroes, one historian has facetiously, but 
falsely, stated that the first white child born in Washington was a Negro. 
	Bush did not stay at New Market, but settled on a fertile little prairie nearby, which 
is still called Bush Prairie. The later settlers had much reason to bless the name of George 
Bush. By the fall of 1852, his farm was bursting with acres of wheat, corn, potatoes, beans, 
pumpkins and livestock in abundance. 
	Then came the wagon-trains of that ill-fated year. Cholera had attacked them on the 
broiling plains. Starvation had struck in the mountains and many of them had been forced 
by hunger to eat the grain meant for seed in the new land. They arrived on Puget Sound in 
pitiable condition. 
	Says Archie Binns, in his beautifully written historical novel of the Puget Sound 
country, Mighty Mountain: "Watching those emigrants come in, I saw that flesh is a 
luxury. It's the bones that matter. When flesh gets to be too expensive a luxury, the skull 
comes out in the face and takes charge. It's the skull and some dream burning in it that 
keeps the leg bones walking on, and the wrist bones cracking the whip on galled skeletons 
of horses and cattle that must not be allowed to lie down because they would never get up 
again." 
	Most of these tattered men had a few dollars to start a new life in a now country, 
but they would have given all they had to George Bush for a pittance from his plenty. He 
could have made himself a fortune, but instead he gave his fortune away. He gave the 
newcomers all they needed to start a new life and didn't collect a dollar. 

	Later he almost lost his farm because Negroes weren't allowed to own land in the 
United States. But his neighbors rallied to his defense and carried their protest to the 
national capitol, where Congress passed a special act allowing George Bush and his heirs 
to hold land forever.


p12

	The settler's good Indian friend, Leschi, sent a dozen of his braves to help harvest 
Bush's life-giving crop before the autumn rains fell, and the brown man and the red 
deserve the credit for saving Olympia from death by starvation almost before it was born. 
	There is little racial discrimination at the southern tip of Puget Sound. Here men are 
not looked upon as less than men because their skins are dark. Here in a country that was 
given life by two men whose skins were dark, they never should be. 
	The James McAllisters settled in the Nisqually Valley, in the midst of Leschi's 
people. Their first home was in two huge hollow cedar stumps until Leschi and his braves 
helped them to build a log farm house. Leschi wanted his people to learn the farming 
techniques of the Boston men, and McAllister was encouraged to take land among the 
Indians. 
	McAllister, as a lieutenant of territorial Rangers, was to die at the hands of an 
Indian sharpshooter in 1856. The original McAllister homestead included McAllister 
Springs, now the source of Olympia's water supply. 


THE BIRTH OF A CITY 

	The present city of Olympia was really born in 1846, but under a temporary and 
almost forgotten name. Edmund Sylvester and Levi Lathrop Smith staked a joint claim on 
the present site of Washington's capital city. 
	Edmund Sylvester was a Maine fisherman who wanted to forget the cold seas and 
rocky soil of New England. Smith was an epileptic, cultured, solitary, with a call to the 
ministry which had been frustrated by ill health. 
	Each filed on 320 acres under the homestead law of that time, which provided in its 
partnership clause, sole ownership for the survivor in the event of death of either partner. 
Sylvester, weary of the sea, settled on an inland section now known as Chambers Prairie. 
	Smith chose for his claim the land at the southern tip of Budd's Inlet, some two 
miles north of the already settled town of New Market, or Tumwater. 
	Although most of the embryo townsite was covered by virgin timber and tangled 
underbrush, the sandy point at the north end of Smith's claim, now the foot of Capitol Way 
in Olympia, was the northern tip of a two acre clearing which was above extreme high 
water.


p13

	A small bay, extensive at high tide, bounded the claim on the northeast and when 
the tide was up, the bare land somewhat resembled the silhouette of a bear. The area was 
called "Cheet-woot," which in the Nisqually tongue, means "bear". Here in the winter 
months, the Suquamish and Duwamish tribes of Indians under Chief Sealth, or as the white 
men called him, Seattle, were accustomed to camp for the rainy season. 
	The first building of the new city was built in this area - a log cabin about sixteen 
feet square. It stood adjacent to and west of a point midway between the present State and 
Olympia Avenues, and since the town had not yet been laid out, part of the cabin stood on 
what is now Capitol Way. 

	The tragic figure of Smith was soon to depart from the rude stage of pioneer 
Olympia, or Smithfield, as he called his claim. He did not live to see any of the beginnings 
beyond the first rude cabin. 
	At this time, Smithfield was in Lewis County, Oregon Territory, and at the first 
county elections in 1848, Smith was elected representative to the Oregon Provisional 
Legislature. He did not live to take office. As he was traveling to New Market by canoe, he 
was gripped by an epileptic attack, fell into the Sound and was drowned. His was the first 
American death in the Puget Sound country. 
	The life of Olympia's co-founder was not a happy one. Sheets of a diary left by 
Smith show that his fatal disease had long preyed upon his mind. He had renounced a half-
caste Catholic sweetheart in the east to become a Presbyterian minister, but his malady 
made it impossible for him to continue his theological studies. 
	His life of aching loneliness in a wild, new land made him pitifully dependent upon 
the hearty good cheer of his partner, Sylvester, the bluff New England sailor. It is part of 
the dark tragedy of Levi Lathrop Smith that he did not live to glimpse even a hint of the 
beautiful city which was to grow from his rough shack between the empty bay and the 
primeval forests. 

	After Smith's death, Sylvester gave up his Chambers Prairie claim and became the 
permanent occupant of his dead partner's claim. 

	The Washington Standard, published at Olympia, in 1867, reproduced an inventory 
of Smith's former holdings, made by Sylvester on a torn leaf from a ship's log book. Editor 
John Miller Murphy wrote: 

"The following copy of an original document is pleasant as well as a curious reminiscence 
of those primitive times. The contrast between that cabin and its simple furniture and the 
present mansion (Sylvester's) is not only marked, but affords a fair comparison between 
Olympia of 1848 and Olympia of 1867. It also serves to remind us how


p14

the pioneers of the American settlements were obliged to live, and while they so willingly 
submitted to privation in their great mission of making homes for American men and 
women, yet they found time for jest in the very poverty that surrounded them, satisfied 
because they had abundance to supply their passing wants." 

Smith Field 
July 25, 1848. 

	" 'N. B. New Market Precinct, Lewis County, on the shore of Puget's Sound, 
Simmon's Inlet, one mile below the falls on the La Shutes River. 
	" 'In it you will find one house built of split cedar with a stone fireplace and a stick 
chimney. It is covered with four foot shingles, put on with weight poles. It has three lights 
and one door, with a rough puncheon floor, made of split cedar, with a closet and a bed 
room made of the same materials. 
	" 'The furniture consists of two tables, one bedstead which is made by boring holes 
in the side of the house and driving in sticks; three benches and two stools. The cooking 
utensils consist of one frying pan and tin kettles, one 12-quart and one 6-quart and one 3-
quart, for boiling and one tea-kettle. The closet contains one tin pan, three tin cups, three 
tin plates, three knives and forks, two half-pint kettles, one basin and one trencher. 
	" 'The enclosure two acres of land, with one and a half under cultivation with corn, 
beans, pumpkins, squashes, potatoes, peas, cabbage, melons, cucumbers, beets, parsnips, 
carrots, onions, tomatoes, radishes, lettuce, parsley, sweet fennel, peppergrass, summer 
savory and sunflowers. 
	" 'The out house, one hog house and one hen house, with five hogs three pigs, 
seven hens, and a cock, cat and dog, one yoke of oxen and two horses. 

" ' Signed 
" 'Edmund Sylvester. 

" 'Attest: 
"'Witness:
Michael T. Simmons 
Samuel B. Crockett 
Daniel D. Kinsey.'" 


	Such then, was Smithfield, or Smithter, in the year 1848. Destined to become the 
capital city of a great state yet to be born, the table service for three in its one rude 
dwelling was more than enough to serve its entire population. 
	It was not an impressive beginning, but 1847 and 1848 were years of destiny for 
the city of the future. A trail was cleared between Smithfield and New Market in the late 
summer of 1847, and the seeds of a complex transportation network were planted.


p15

	By 1848, the population of the Smithfield-Newmarket area had increased. Early in 
1847, a party consisting of Mr. Davis and family, Samuel Cool, A. J. Moore, Benjamin 
Gordon, Thomas W. Glasgow, Samuel Hancock and Leander C. Wallace arrived at New 
Market. 
	Later that year, Elisha and William Packwood arrived with their families, followed 
by J. B. Logan, A. D. Carnefix and Frank Shaw. 
	Thomas Chambers and his sons, David, Andrew, Thomas J. and McLain, with 
George Shazer and a Mr. Brail arrived during the winter. 


PRIEST'S POINT 

	In 1848, too, the area became an educational center with the arrival of Father Pascal 
Ricard and a little band of Oblat missionaries. The gentle fathers found a cathedral waiting 
for them. 

	On a long-ago June day, they stood on a jutting headland of the Sound and saw the 
benediction of slanted sunlight streaming through the hushed nave of ancient fir trees, and 
they knew that this was the place where they would bring the red men to a knowledge of 
the white man's God. 
	More than a century has fled since then and the good fathers are long gone to their 
reward. The few descendants of their Indian friends live on a somber island reservation 
down the Sound, and the only living memory of Father Ricard and his mission is the name 
of the beautiful headland where he lived and worked - Priest's Point. 
	After the Indian wars of the '50s, the Squaxin tribe was moved to its reservation on 
Squaxin Island, and the mission declined. Father Ricard left soon after to found other 
frontier missions. With its passing, the first spark of Old World culture to reach Puget 
Sound was extinguished. 

	Priest Point is now an Olympia city park. Almost as hushed and lovely as it was 
when the Mission of St. Joseph of New Market was founded there, it is rich in historic 
memories. 
	To the imaginative visitor, there on a quiet day may come, as he strolls through 
dark forests above the quiet ebb of Puget Sound, an echo soft as memory down the corridor 
of years, echo of the chant of priest and mission Indian, and he may be reminded of the 
ringing, tragic words of Old Seattle: 

	"And when the last red man shall have perished, and the memory of my tribe shall 
have become a myth among the white man, these shores will swarm with the invisible dead 
of my tribe, and when your children's children think themselves alone in the field, the 
store, upon


p16

the highway, or in the silence of the pathless woods, they will not be alone. In all the earth 
there is no place dedicated to solitude. At night when the streets of your cities and villages 
are silent and you think them deserted, they will throng with the returning hosts that once 
filled them and still love this beautiful land. The white man will never be alone. " 

	Some of the quaint old 16th century French text books used by the priests of 
Priest's Point are now kept at the State Library in Olympia. 


GOLD RUSH DAYS 

	The formal Territorial Government of Oregon was established on August 14, 1848. 
It included all the Pacific possessions of the United States north of the 32nd parallel. The 
Olympia of today was still officially known as Smithfield, Lewis County, Oregon. 
	The year 1849 was a dark one for the Puget Sound country as the bright flame of 
California gold eclipsed the northern coast. Crops were left to rot and half-built cabins 
were deserted, as all but a few devoted souls stampeded for the California gold fields. 
	With most of the able-bodied white men gone, Patkanim, chief of the Snoqualmie, 
called together a great council of the Puget Sound Indians. Patkanim urged the canoe 
Indians to join with the horse Indians from east of the great mountains, to drive the whites 
from the land. 
	"Soon," he said, "the white men will outnumber the Indians, and then we shall be 
driven to a land where the sun never shines, and there we shall be left to sicken and die." 
	The Puget Sound tribes refused to join with Patkanim in his proposed massacre. 
The Hudson Bay men at Fort Nisqually had long treated the Indians kindly and fairly. 
When the first Americans at Tumwater Falls felt the autumn chill of 1846, they delegated 
Colonel Simmons and Jim McAllister to call upon Dr. Tolmie, the chief factor at Fort 
Nisqually, for help. 

	Although it was contrary to the interests of the Hudson's Bay Company and the 
British government to encourage American settlers in this disputed territory, the kindly 
factor agreed to furnish clothing, food and blankets to the people of New Market, and to 
buy shingles from them. In return he demanded that they observe the company's policy of 
dealing with the Indians and to help in protecting the gentle Puget Sound Indians from the 
brutal raids of the war-like Haidahs of British Columbia, who swept down periodically in 
their 70-foot ocean- going war canoes to murder, pillage and take slaves and women.


p17

	The first American settlers observed this code scrupulously, and as a result the 
Nisquallys, Squaxons [Squaxin] and other tribes of the upper Sound, looked upon the 
white men as friends and protectors. Had later settlers been as wise, the Puget Sound 
country might have gone down in history as the only section of America where red men 
and white worked out their destiny without murder, bitterness or tragedy. 
	A war party of Patkanim's braves did attack Fort Nisqually in 1849, and a white 
man, Leander C. Wallace, was killed. Later Patkanim was bribed with 80 blankets to 
deliver up six of the supposed murderers for trial and as a result of this sordid episode, 
which reflects credit on neither Indians nor whites, two of the six Indians were found 
guilty and hanged. 
	While this was transpiring, Leschi, son-in-law of the Chief of the Nisquallys, was 
learning agriculture from his friend, Jim McAllister, and as the most influential of the 
upper Sound Indians, he was building a firm foundation of peace and good will between 
his people and the Americans. 
	So it was that the tiny settlements of Puget Sound escaped annihilation at the hands 
of the Indians while their men were away in the gold rush of '49. 


RETURN OF THE GOLD SEEKERS 

	The treasure hunters began to drift back in a year or so. Some were broke, just as 
they were when they started. Some, like Sylvester, brought back pokes of dust to buy land 
and goods and ships to found new, solid fortunes in the northwest. Some brought new 
settlers with them. 
	The year 1850 was another year of great beginnings. In the spring the Smith claim 
was dedicated as a town. Edmund Sylvester still owned the whole town, and he decided to 
launch it with a new name - Olympia. 
	The name Olympia appears to have been suggested by Colonel I. N. Ebey, who 
joined the gold rush and was fairly successful, returning north in 1850 and settling on a 
valuable claim on Whidby Island. 
	The Colonel was down for the dedication ceremony and added his oratory to the 
occasion. He composed these lines for the little assemblage gathered at the city's birth, and 
they have become a part of the capital's history: 


p18

"Afar their crystal summits rise 
Like gems against the sunset skies, 
While far below, the shadowy mist 
In waves of pearl and amethyst, 
'Round somber fir and stately pine, 
Its dewy, jeweled fingers twine; 
Olympia's gods might view with grace, 
Nor scorn so fair a dwelling place." 


	Historians disagree as to who should receive credit for suggesting the very fitting 
name, Olympia, for Washington's capital city. Some claim that it was actually the 
suggestion of Charles Harte Smith, who was a partner of Simmons in an early Olympia 
store located at First and Main. 
	Hubert Howe Bancroft quotes Elwood Evans (Washington's first historian and 
pioneer Olympian), backed by Sylvester, as crediting Ebey with the name. In later years, 
Evans credited Smith. Still later, in a booklet edited by Evans for the State World's Fair 
Commission of 1893, Hugh Goldsborough is listed as suggesting the name. 
	In this regard, it is interesting to note that the only two books mentioned in Ebey's 
journal are the Bible and a Life of Olympia Fluvius Morata (an Italian scholar of the 16th 
century). This, coupled with the foregoing poem, indicate that the name Olympia was in 
the Colonel's mind at the time, and it is likely that the credit should go to him. 
	Colonel Ebey's subsequent life was quite a saga in itself. In 1853 he was appointed 
a Collector of Customs. He was a doughty champion of the rights of the American settlers 
in conflicts with the British colonial government at Vancouver, and was the first to explore 
inland in what is now King County.


p19

	In 1857 a band of raiding Northern Indians of the Haidah tribe fell into battle with 
the U.S. Government steamers, Massachusetts and Traveler, and were given a sound 
drubbing, losing 27 killed and 21 wounded. Instead of teaching the savages a lesson, it left 
them burning for revenge, and they made a sneak attack on Ebey's isolated homestead. His 
official position and great popularity made him a white chief "Boston Tyee" - in their 
minds. 
	Shortly after midnight, the Colonel's dogs gave the alarm and he stepped to the 
door to investigate the disturbance. Two shots flashed in the dark, wounding him. Two 
more dropped him to the ground and as he fell, the Indians sprang upon him and 
decapitated him. 
	Ebey's wife and three children escaped to spread the alarm and the neighbors 
gathered for defense, but in the morning it was found that the Haidahs had gone as silently 
as they had come. Haidah revenge was complete with the death of the man who took a 
lovely name from Greek mythology and gave it to Washington's capital city. 


A NEW COUNTY 

	Olympia's water-borne commerce began in 1850 when, on New Year's Day, the 
brig Orbit arrived in the harbor from California where she had been purchased by 
Sylvester, Ebey and other Olympians with California gold. 
	Olympia was the Orbit's home port, and she was the first sea-going ship owned on 
Puget Sound. On her first voyage, she loaded a cargo of piling for San Francisco. This 
development was of interest to the federal government as well as the settlers of Olympia 
and New Market, and, the following year, a customs house was established at Olympia. 
	A customs house employee has left a journal which contains a vivid description of 
the city at about the time of its first birthday in 1851: 

	" 'The place is situated near the head of Budd's Wet, on a low flat, and the tide 
rushes in and falls nearly 24 feet. On the margin of the sound, clams and mussels abound 
and ducks of diverse varieties are most numerous. The largest house by far in the place is 
now occupied by the Customs House. It is a large two-story house, not far from the 
extreme northermost point, and on paper is designed as being near First and Main streets, 
though the streets, to a great extent, exist in the imagination.


p21

	" 'It belongs to Colonel Simmons, the American settler on the Sound, who has a 
little room parcelled off for a store, though the stock is slim, and a still smaller apartment 
dedicated as a post office. As the Colonel repudiates being "book larnt", the post office 
runs itself, or rather some half a dozen or more, having been sworn in as deputies, help 
themselves and the few who come to inquire for letters. The upper story has been fitted for 
a customs house and residence for which Col. Simmons receives the snug little rent of $50 
per month. 
	" 'There are about a dozen one-story cabins of primitive architecture covered with 
split cedar siding, well-ventilated but healthy. They answer the purpose well, for the 
winters are mild though moist. Snow and ice are comparatively unknown, but it rains on 
short notice and without difficulty. There are some 20 or more Indian huts at a short 
distance from the Customs House. 
	" 'The Indians are of the D'Wamish tribe, a filthy, fish-eating flat-headed lot, who 
live without much effort and are content with such clothing and conveniences as they can 
purchase or obtain with the little they earn by occasional labor for the whites and the trifle 
they receive for fish, ducks, venison, oysters, berries, etc. 
	" 'Old Seattle is their Chief, a venerable looking old personage who, by his stately 
walk and dignified carriage, would remind you of Col. Benton. He is friendly to the whites, 
claims to remember the voyage of the renowned Vancouver, and while he considers it 
beneath his dignity to use the jargon of the country, he will show you by friendly shake of 
the hand and a grunt that he expects to be noticed by the newcomer. 
	" 'The hospitable people consist of immigrants from Missouri and Illinois, and a 
goodly sprinkling from the state of Maine. Col. Isaac N. Ebey is perhaps the most 
influential of the citizens, but Goldsborough, Simmons, Poe and the Custom House 
officials are worthy of mention. Edmund Sylvester, the town proprietor and native of 
Maine, has recently built a dwelling. Beside it stands the old log cabin - the first house 
built on the townsite. Dr. Lansdale has a little shanty east of it on a back street where he 
dispenses calomel and occasionally justice, for the worthy doctor has been selected by his 
fellow citizens as justice of the peace. 
	" 'I recently witnessed a trial before him in which Captain Crosby and Colonel 
Michael T. Simmons were parties, growing out of a question of title to and possession of 
the Tumwater claim. It originally was taken by Simmons in 1845, but purchased by Crosby 
in 1849. J. B. Chapman, Esq., of Steilacoom, was attorney for Crosby, Col. Simmons being 
represented by Daniel R. Bigelow, Esq., of Massachusetts, who crossed the plains this last 
season and arrived in Olympia in the Schooner Exact from Portland on a voyage to Queen 
Charlotte's Island, where gold is supposed to exist in large quantities.


p22

	" 'Mr. Bigelow is a retiring, modest man, but seems to understand his profession 
well enough, and though his old and unscrupulous antagonist attempted to badger and 
bully him, yet he held his own with imperturbable good temper. Bigelow had grammar and 
good English on his side, anyway. 
	" 'Quincy A. Brooks, Esq., now employed in the Customs House, is another 
attorney just arrived. He has on several occasions helped us while away these dreadfully 
long nights of this northern latitude, by his admirable playing on the violin of which he is a 
master. It really seems to me that should he fail to convince a jury by his oratory, he might 
by leave of the court, prove irresistible with his fiddle. Dr. D. S. Maynard, hailing from 
Ohio, like his brother Lansdale, with the melancholy experience that there is no demand 
for pills, has taken to store keeping about 100 yards south of the Customs House. He offers 
great inducements to his very limited supply of purchasers.' " 

	Smith's cabin had expanded into a crude hotel and store, but only the barest 
essentials were to be bought in Olympia until 1852, when George Barnes opened a general 
merchandise store at the west end of First Street. This opened a new era, with such luxuries 
as soap, sperm candles, hoop skirts and patent medicines added to the pioneer necessities 
of axes, powder, shot, whiskey and smoked fish. 
	Before long, business houses were opened by A. J. Moses, J. G. Parker, Sam 
Coulter, L. Bettman, Goldman and Rosenblatt, and Louison and Company. 
	Another ship sailed out of Olympia harbor in 1851 when a schooner was chartered 
by Samuel Williams, J. Colvig, William Billings, S. D. Howe, Charles Weed, S. S. Ford 
and three Sargent brothers to explore the new-found gold fields on Queen Charlotte's 
Island. 
	The schooner was wrecked on the east side of the island and the fierce Haidahs 
stripped the ship, capturing the hopeful Olympians. After two months of captivity, they 
were released by a revenue cutter and troops from Fort Steilacoom. 
	The year 1852 found the little settlement fairly prosperous and its citizens with high 
hopes for the future. Coal had been discovered nearby, several saw mills had been 
established and these pioneer industries were the nucleus of a growing trade with booming 
California. They felt, however, that their interests were jeopardized by their political 
boundaries. 
	The Sound country was then the northern part of the Territory of Oregon. Many of 
the towns and settlements were 500 wilderness-miles from the seat of government, and the 
settlers weren't getting much attention or consideration from the Territorial Legislature. All 
the territory north of Cowlitz County was a part of Lewis County and it contained 
somewhat more than 300 white inhabitants.


p23

	Pacific County was created in 1851, and, in 1852, another new county was 
approved to include the land west of the Cascade Mountains and north of the Cowlitz 
divide. The new county was named Thurston in honor of Oregon Territory's delegate to 
Congress, Samuel R. Thurston, who was pledged to defend the territorial rights of the 
northern section against the claims of the Hudson's Bay Company. 
	Thurston had died at sea while returning home from the national capitol in 1851 
and was buried at Acapulco. Years later his body was brought home and now lies in 
Salem, Oregon, marked with a stone bearing this inscription: 

	"Here rests Oregon's delegate, a man of genius and learning, a lawyer and 
statesman, his Christian virtues equalled by his wide philanthropy. His public acts were his 
best eulogium." 

	With a new county on the map, an election was in order, so in June, 1852, the 
citizens went to the polls and elected A. J. Simmons as Thurston County's first sheriff; A. 
M. Poe, county clerk; D. R. Bigelow treasurer; R. S. Bailey, assessor, and Edmund 
Sylvester, coroner. A. A. Denny, S. S. Ford and David Shelton were the first Thurston 
County commissioners. 
	The records of the first session of the county commissioners show the following 
business transacted: 
	The tax levy was fixed at 4 mills for county purposes, 11/2 mills for schools, 11/2 
mills territorial, and $1 poll tax. 
	T. F. McElroy and George Barnes were appointed justices of the peace. 
	Road districts were established and William Packwood was authorized to establish 
a ferry across the Nisqually River. 
	Precincts were established as follows: Skagit precinct, Whidby Island and all 
islands north; Port Townsend precinct, territory north of Hood's Canal on the west side of 
the Sound; Duwamish (or Duwamps) precinct, east side of Sound north of Puyallup River 
and all south of Hood's Canal to the parallel of the north parallel of the Puyallup River on 
the west side of the Sound; Steilacoom precinct, territory north of the Nisqually River to 
the Puyallup River on the east side of the Sound and thence due west to the mouth of the 
Nisqually River to the parallel of the mouth of the Puyallup River; Olympia precinct 
included all territory south of Steilacoom precinct. 
	Olympia precinct had two school districts, with one each in Duwamish, Skagit and 
Port Townsend precincts. The first term of district court was convened at Olympia in 1852 
and Elwood Evans, D. R. Bigelow, Quincy A. Brooks, and S. H. Moses were admitted to 
practice law.


p24

WASHINGTON TERRITORY 

	This was truly a year of progress for Olympia and Thurston County, and not least 
of the developments was the founding of the first newspaper in what is now the state of 
Washington. Publishers Thornton F. McElroy and J. W. Wiley issued Volume 1, Number 
1, of the weekly Columbian on September 11, 1852. 
	The new paper vigorously advocated a new territory to be formed of the area north 
of the Columbia. The editors chose their stand well, for their subscribers were all heartily 
in favor of the idea. 
	Continued agitation along this line resulted in the historic Monticello Convention 
on the banks of the Cowlitz River on November 25, 1852. Thurston County's delegates 
were M. T. Simmons, S. D. Ruddle, S. P. Moses, Adam Whyte, Q. A. Brooks and C. H. 
Hale. 
	As a result of the convention, Congress was memorialized to create the Territory of 
Columbia out of that portion or Oregon lying north and west of the Columbia River. There 
was no opposition from the other citizens of Oregon, and the new territory was created the 
following year. 
	Congress didn't go along with the citizens in their choice of a name, however. 
Richard H. Stanton of Kentucky suggested that a District of Columbia and a Territory of 
Columbia would be confusing. He wanted to honor the Father of His Country - and the 
Territory of Washington was the result. 

	Olympia's first public school was built at the corner of Sixth and Franklin, on the 
present site of the building which houses the Olympia News 52, in the spring of 1852, but 
the heavy snow of that winter caused it to collapse. It was soon replaced by a sturdier 
building. 
	In February of that year, four men named Bell, Boren, David and Arthur Denny set 
up claims in the wilderness on the east side of Elliott Bay. This hopeful young town, with a 
population of four, was soon to be named after the friendly Duwamish Chief, Seattle. 
Olympia was a lusty two-year-old, the metropolis of a new territory, and there was little 
time, with all the new developments, to take note of the birth of another tiny settlement 
along the great tidal forests.


p25

THE PRESS 

	When the schooner Mary Lane dropped anchor in Olympia Harbor and the weekly 
Columbian's little Ramage hand press was hoisted from her hold, the printed word had 
come to the new frontier to stay. The newspaper had come to the Northwest and the slow 
stamping of the little Ramage was to swell into the clatter of a great network of news wires 
and the thunder of the mighty power presses that now pour out more than 300 newspapers, 
large and small, in 167 Washington cities and towns. 
	Most important of all, to the historian, the coming of the press meant the coming of 
detailed history, for from 1852 to the present day, the yellowed files of the Columbian and 
the newspapers which followed it provide a detailed, day-by-day chronology of the great 
and small events of a growing empire. 
	The Columbian's crude hand press had more than its share of glory. It was already 
nearly a quarter of a century old when it arrived in Olympia, having been shipped around 
the Horn from New York to Mexico City. By 1834, it was in Monterey, California, where 
the Spanish governor used it to print the Alta California, the first newspaper on the Pacific 
Coast. In 1836, it was in Upper California, stamping out San Francisco's first newspaper, 
the Star. Later it was moved north to print the famous Old Oregon Spectator, which was 
Oregon's first paper, later becoming the Portland Oregonian.


p26

	In her long career, the little Ramage changed her language and her politics more 
than once, but she was consistent in following the first waves of the pioneers and bringing 
the printed word to the outposts of civilization. When her work at Olympia was done, she 
served in Seattle, Steilacoom, Whatcom and Port Townsend, and is now at well earned rest 
in the University of Washington Museum. 
	The first issue of the Columbian carried considerable advertising. Edmund 
Sylvester, father of Olympia and proprietor of the first "hall for travelers," the Olympia 
House, corner of Second and Main (now Olympia Avenue and Capitol Way), advertised 
"an accomplished Chinese cook who comes highly recommended by the American Consul 
at Canton" and also "commodious rooms without bath for those who furnish their own 
blankets." 
	Michael Simmons, father of Washington industry, placed the first "help wanted" 
advertisement, a call for "40 to 50 axmen and 8 sawyers to attend a shingle mill." 

	Publisher McElroy wrote back to his bride in Pittsfield, Illinois, on August 10, 
1852, describing his trip by steamer, horseback and canoe to Olympia: 
	"I left Portland on Monday the 3rd inst., and after a pleasant passage of about four 
hours down the Columbia on the steamer Lot Whitcomb (the first Columbia River 
steamboat), arrived at the mouth of the Cowlitz River. Here I left the steamer to go up the 
Cowlitz River. I embarked in a canoe with two Indians on Tuesday morning for 
Warbassport, a trading post at the head of canoe navigation on this river. The ascent is very 
slow on 'account of the many rapids. Despite the rapid current, we reached the forks of the 
river, 18 miles from the mouth, before night. Next day at about 9 o'clock arrived at 
Warbassport. 
	"From this place to Olympia, the conveyance is on horse back. I procured a horse 
and rode 30 miles before night, over a fine farming and grazing country, very sparsely 
settled. On my way, I met a gentleman and a lady on horseback. The lady was riding 
astride and seemed to be as expert in managing her horse as her husband. I hear that all the 
ladies in this part of Oregon have adopted this mode of riding. They follow the example of 
the Indian women in this respect. The next day I arrived at Olympia." 
	McElroy and Wiley set up their crude press and took turns as editor, business 
manager, circulation man and printer's devil. By the following year, young McElroy was 
beginning to feel the separation from his bride more and more, and on September 4, 1853, 
wrote:


p28

	"Well, the first year of the Columbian has about closed. I am completely worn out 
by constant attention to business. Many times I wish I had never left you and home. I am 
glad you are willing to follow my fortunes wherever. I may go, and I do not doubt that you 
would be perfectly happy with me here." 
	That month, the paper was sold to Matt Smith, who published it only a few months 
when he sold it to Wiley. The single owner changed the name to the Washington Pioneer 
and the paper's politics from Whig (Republican) to Democratic. 
	By 1853, the trickle of emigration had become a steady stream. In three years, 
Olympia had sprung from a hopeful dream to a growing reality of a score or more of cedar-
shingled houses and two or three muddy streets. True, Main Street was lined with massive 
stumps, the primal forest still pressed darkly upon the settler's cabins and the Indians still 
camped along the shore, but the solid kernel of a city was there. 


THE CROSBYS 

	Lumber was in great demand as the town grew, and another mill was built to 
harness the pulsing water of the falls at New Market. Ira Ward, N. Barnes and S. Hays 
were the owners and the mill delivered 3,000 feet of lumber a day. Colonel Simmons no 
longer owned the original mill at Tumwater. The Kentucky lumberman sold his mill to a 
New England sailor and used the proceeds to buy the brig Orbit. The sailor-turned-
lumberman prospered. The lumberman-turned-sailor didn't do so well. 
	The Wiscatt, Maine, Crosbys owned The Mill now, and their story is one to be 
remembered. Captain Nathaniel Crosby was the first of the clan to see the Sound country. 
The United States government sent him out in command of the brig O. C. Raymond with 
supplies for the first settlers on the Sound, who were seldom far from starvation in the 
earliest days. Captain Nat liked the new frontier and he believed in direct action. He sent 
word to his elder brother, Clanrick, back in Maine, to buy a ship and bring the family out. 
	Clanrick bought the 270-ton brig Grecian, loaded her with the household 
furnishings of the Crosbys, manned her with a crew of Crosbys and their kinfolk, and took 
her around the Horn to Portland. That voyage brought famous pioneers to New Market, 
whence they overflowed to Olympia. 
	But people have to be careful about tracing their ancestry to the Grecian. Of the 
whole ship's company, passengers, officers and crew, all but four were members of the 
Crosby family, and one of the non-Crosbys was the colored cook. 


p29

	A California vocalist, one Bing Crosby, is one who can legitimately claim descent 
from the afterguard of the Grecian. The old Crosby House still stands at Tumwater and, 
unlike most historic old land. marks in the Olympia area, is to be preserved as an historical 
shrine, 


THE PERCIVALS 

	Olympia now had industries to compete with the water-powered mills at Tumwater 
Falls. In July of 1853, D. C. Beatty opened a furniture manufacturing shop, a brick yard 
had been opened in May by Conrad Snyder, and a bed of small native oysters had been 
discovered at South Bay and was being exploited. 


p30

	Large shipments of coal were being hauled from the Skookumchuck coal fields for 
shipment to California, and little brigs and schooners, the James Marshall, Orbit, G. W. 
Kendall, June, Kingsbury and the bark Sarah Warren were calling at Olympia for cargoes 
of shingles, timber, pilings and coal for San Francisco. 
	On January 8, 1853, the Sarah Warren dropped anchor with $15,000 worth of 
merchandise for Olympia stores. She left two passengers, Captain and Mrs. S. W. Percival. 
They were destined to live out their lives in Olympia and to leave their mark on the 
community. The name is still well-known in and around the capital city. 

	Captain Percival soon built and operated a saw mill at the mouth of what is now 
Capitol Lake. He also built a dock for the accommodation of the first steamers running at 
Olympia, and Percival's Dock at the foot of Water Street was a center of community life 
for more than half a century. 
	Most of the famous old Puget Sound steamers rubbed their trim flanks against its 
pilings in their day, and it is still used by unglamorous but efficient diesel freighters of the 
Puget Sound Freight Lines. Percival also conducted one of the town's leading mercantile 
establishments at the corner of Main and Second Streets until 1876. Captain Percival's son, 
Samuel, operated the dock and steamship ticket office until shortly before the second 
World War.


p31

	The census of that year showed Thurston County with a population of 996, Pierce 
513, the Territory 3,965. 
	J. R. Johnson, M D., announced the opening of a hospital on his claim at Johnson's 
Point at the head of South Bay. The doctor was the first settler at South Bay and the name 
of his point is famous in upper Sound steamboat lore. Like "old Bachus," the naval surgeon 
of H. M. & Bounty, Dr. Johnson's favorite, and at times, only, medicine was a high-test 
whiskey, for which his "hospital" was noted. 


THE GOVERNOR ARRIVES 

	All this the settlers noted with considerable satisfaction, but the really big news of 
the year was the arrival of the territory's first governor. Isaac Ingalls Stevens arrived at 
Olympia on November 26, 1853. On November 28th, he proclaimed Olympia the Capital 
of Washington Territory. 
	The figure of Isaac Stevens, first governor of Washington, is a controversial one to 
this day. Some historians paint him as a knight in shining armor, the champion of the new 
frontier, a statesman without flaw or blemish. 
	Others portray him as a hard-drinking, autocratic martinet, who brought the tragedy 
of an unnecessary Indian war upon the territory. 
	The truth probably lies somewhere between the two extremes. Here the facts shall 
speak for themselves and the reader may form his own opinion.


p33

	The arrival of Governor Stevens marked the first step in Olympia's governmental 
growth to become one of the nation's most beautiful capital cities. Only eight months had 
passed since the northwest pioneers had received separate recognition from Oregon. 
	The weekly Columbian, now named the Washington Pioneer, which had done a lot 
of heavy editorializing to help bring this about, was still happy about the achievement of 
separate territorial status for Washington. Said the editor, "The recent enactment of the law 
to establish a territory... has give a gallant, dashing, sparkling and ponderous momentum to 
the march and swagger of progress. During our poor dependence upon the cold charity of 
Oregon, we must as weak and puny infants, creep. But now... no longer in the hands of go-
betweens, we have become a people within ourselves. Progress is our watchword. Our 
destiny is in the keeping of God, the national government and our own judgement." 
	The Pioneer did not fail to keep its readers posted on the matter of a governor for 
the new territory. "Just as we are going to press, a gentleman who came passenger on the 
steamer Columbia informs us that a Mr. Stevens of Massachusetts has been appointed 
governor of Washington Territory." 
	By the following week, Olympia had learned this stranger from the States was 
Brevet-Major Isaac I. Stevens, U. S. Engineers, and a month later the Pioneer's editor had 
received vastly cheering and important news by post from the governor himself. He passed 
Steven's message on to his readers. 
	"I herewith enclose to you," Stevens had written, "my private instructions from the 
War Department regarding an exploration and survey of a railroad from the headwaters of 
the upper Mississippi river to Puget Sound." 
	The governor assured that "While I am delayed by the charge of this work, there 
will be no delay in the organization of the government as Col. Anderson, the marshal, will 
at once take the census preliminary to a proclamation ordering an election of a Territorial 
Legislature. . ." 
	The citizens were greatly cheered as the published letter continued, "Twenty 
thousand dollars have been appropriated and placed in my hands to construct a military 
road from Fort Walla Walla to the Sound, early enough for this year's immigration." 

	This was of particular importance to the Olympia area as more and more settlers 
were reaching the area by way of Natchez Pass - an arduous and terribly dangerous route. 
A wagon road to Eastern Washington would bring a golden harvest of wealth and new 
settlers.


p34

	The governor's dispatch continued, "I do feel no doubt but that I shall succeed this 
year in piercing the Rocky Mountains and the Cascade Ranges and in opening a direct 
communication between the Mississippi and the Sound on the Pacific. As I must devote 
myself thoroughly to the interests of the Territory, I shall consult freely and be advised by 
my fellow citizens. I remain, Isaac I. Stevens." 
	Although the eager readers of the Washington Pioneer probably didn't note it, the 
governor's letter gave an indication of what was to prove probably his greatest weakness. 
Governor Stevens, to use an old American expression, had a tendency to "bite off more 
than he could chew." 
	He had no apparent doubts as to his ability to survey a transcontinental railway, 
build a trans-territorial highway, settle the Indian and Hudson's Bay Company problems, 
and establish a territorial government, all more or less at once. No man, however brilliant - 
and Isaac Stevens was brilliant - could do all these things and do all of them well. His 
greatest failure was to be in the field of Indian affairs, and it was to prove a tragic failure. 
	But to the eager settlers, awaiting the coming of their new leader, no such doubts 
obtruded. True, there was much to be done when the governmental wheels of the new 
territory would finally be set into motion. 
	The eastern Washington Indians were openly hostile. The Sound Indians, once 
docile and friendly as children, were becoming sullen as they saw their tribal lands taken 
over by new settlers, many of whom refused to follow the old code of fair play, 
considering the Indians on a par with wild beasts which should be exterminated as soon as 
possible. 
Other troublesome problems pressed close upon the people as Hudson's Bay Company 
traps bit deep into the territory's choicest sections, and British aggression was asserting 
extensive rights. 

	But a railroad route was being explored! A railroad that would some day creep 
across a continent, a slender thread of iron linking fast two shores across a nation's future! 
The territory tempered its impatience and waited. 
	Then.. . "Glorious news for Washington! Arrival of Governor Stevens! Complete 
success of the Expedition! Entire practicability of the Northern Pacific Route," the Pioneer 
shouted, breathless, to its readers. 
	Then, more coherently, "Governor Stevens arrived at this place on Saturday last, 
November 25, 1853, through a drenching rain, having completed one of the most arduous 
and triumphantly successful explorations ever performed since the organization of the 
federal government. 


p35

	"Six months devoted to incessant toil, danger and the overcoming of insuperable 
obstacles, has brought to our new territory a governor, and with him, as we believe, the 
ground work of the Pacific railway... A new Territory, set apart and organized in one year, 
and a favorable report for a railway from the Atlantic states to the Sound! Who can 
anticipate our future Territory!" 
	In spite of the advance notice, the governor's arrival took the villagers by surprise. 
They were preparing a big reception for him at the Washington Hotel at Second and Main, 
once Sylvester's Olympia House, now operated by a Mr. Stanley. When a swarthy, black- 
bearded little stranger in shabby frontier garb dismounted stiffly from his horse in the chill 
November rain, the citizens were too busy to notice him. 
	The newcomer entered the hotel dining room, but was told to go to the kitchen for 
food, as the dining room was reserved for a great welcoming banquet for the new governor 
of the Territory, who was expected momentarily. When the travel-stained little stranger at 
last convinced the proprietor that he was the long-awaited governor, the effect was electric. 

	The astonished settlers thronged about, the Olympia Light Artillery fired a national 
salute of 100 guns from the village's small but enthusiastic cannon, flags fluttered in the 
chill, wet wind, and the first governor of Washington was literally swept into the arms of a 
welcoming people. 
	All of the leading citizens of Olympia and New Market were at the hotel for the 
official meeting. These included Colonel William Cock, Shirley Ensign, D. R. Bigelow, 
George A. Barnes, H. A. Goldsborough, Jno. M. Swan, C. H. Hale, Judge B. F. Yantis, 
Judge Gilmore Hays, Jno. G. Parker, Quincy A. Brooks, Dr. G. K. Willard, Colonel 
Michael T. Simmons, Capt. Clanrick Crosby, Ira Ward, James Biles, Joseph Cushman, S. 
W. Percival, Edwin Marsh, R. M. Walker, Levi and James Offut, J. C. Head, W. Dobbins, 
Isaac Hawk, Rev. George F. Whitworth, Jared S. Hurd, H. R. Woodward, B. F. Brown, and 
M. Hured. 
	Publisher Wiley of the Washington Pioneer delivered the address of welcome, and 
Governor Stevens responded with a talk on the results of his explorations for a northern 
transcontinental rail route and his plans for the future government of the territory. 


p36

	Never a man to waste time, Stevens immediately issued a proclamation establishing 
election districts, and naming January 30, 1854, as the time for holding an election for 
delegate to Congress and members of the first Territorial Legislature, which was to 
convene at Olympia, February 28. 
	The governor appointed Colonel Simmons Indian Agent for the Puget Sound 
Indians and sent him to visit the various tribes, "bearing a message of friendship from the 
White Father." The baby-faced Kentuckian was apparently a sort of pioneer Dale Carnegie, 
with a gift for making friends and influencing Indians. 
	His persuasive powers were instrumental in coaxing all the chiefs and leaders of the 
Puget Sound tribes, except Leschi, to give up their people's birth-right for a mess of 
pottage in the form of cheap gifts and hazy promises. 
	Charles H. Mason, the first secretary of state, had arrived before Governor Stevens. 
The first treasurer was Colonel William Cock. Daniel Bigelow was the first auditor. Judge 
Edward Lander was first chief justice of the Territorial Supreme Court, and Columbia 
Lancaster was elected delegate to Congress. 
	The first political campaign in Thurston County was a spirited one. Elected were 
Councilmen (Senators) B. F. Yantis, Whig and D. R. Bigelow, Democrat. Representatives 
were L. D. Durgin and David Shelton, Democrats, and Ira Ward and C. H. Hale, Whigs. 
The Whigs, forerunners of the present Republicans, were elected without much help from 
the very Democratic Washington Pioneer. The Union party failed to place any of its 
candidates. 


FIRST LEGISLATURE 

	The first legislature met in a little two-story frame building on Main, between 
Second and Third Streets. The Gold Bar Store and Restaurant occupied the street floor, the 
law-makers the upper story. There Stevens predicted a brilliant future for the Territory, 
urged county and school organization, and the establishment of a state militia. 
	He dwelt upon the importance of extinguishing the Indian land titles and the claims 
of the Hudson's Bay Company and its subsidiary Puget Sound Agricultural Company, and 
settling of the British boundary line. Most of his measures were promptly adopted by the 
legislature. The militia bill was not passed, however, and the legislators had cause to regret 
their oversight before two years were past. 
	Several acts of the first Territorial Legislature had considerable effect on Thurston 
County. Chehalis (later Grays Harbor) County was created from the southwest part of 
Thurston County. Sawamish County was made from the northwest section.


p37

	This name was later changed to Mason County, in honor of the first secretary of 
state, or territorial secretary, as he was then called. Secretary Mason died of a fever in 
1856. He was then 29 years old. Mason's fatal fever, like that of other pioneers, was 
probably brought on by overdoses of the kind of medicine prescribed by Dr. Johnson of 
Johnson's Point. 
	The Oregon Territorial Legislature has already carved the counties of Pierce, King, 
Island, and Jefferson from Thurston during the previous year, and the Washington 
legislature of 1854 left Thurston County with substantially its present boundaries, except 
for a section at the south, which later went back to Lewis County. 
	Roads were authorized between Olympia and Shoalwater Bay (Willapa Harbor); 
from Cathlamet to S. S. Ford's place in Thurston County (now Fords Prairie, Lewis 
County); Olympia to the mouth of the Columbia River, and Olympia to Monticello 
(Longview). 
	County officers were appointed by the legislature, with the following for Thurston 
County: Commissioners, S. E. Ford, David J. Chambers, and James McAllister; Auditor, 
V. E. Hicks; Sheriff, Frank Kennedy; Assessor, Whitfield Kertly; Probate Judge, Stephen 
D. Ruddle; Treasurer, D. R. Bigelow; School Superintendent, Elwood Evans; and Justices 
of Peace, William (Squire) Plumb, Nathan Eaton and Joseph Broshears. Ruddle declined 
the judgeship and Judge Joseph Cushman was appointed in his place. 


p38

	While the political structure of the Territory was being formed, material progress 
continued in the capital city, still a tiny settlement of scarce 100 folk huddled in a clearing 
between the salt water of its inlet and the dark wilderness of its forests. 
	The Washington Pioneer, ex-Columbian, became the Pioneer and Democrat, but 
its little hand press on the edge of the tideflats continued to thump out the events of the 
tiny community it served. 
	The first seal of the Territory was designated by a member of Steven's Northern 
Railway Exploring party. The seal, representing a sheet of water being traversed by a 
steamer and sailing vessel, with a Goddess of Hope with an anchor, pointing to the 
Chinook word "Alki" (By and by), was adopted and used until the Territory became a state 
in 1889. 
	The present state seal was designed at that time by the Talcott brothers of the 
pioneer Olympia jewelry firm. The Talcott brothers also drilled the first of the famous 
Olympia artesian wells. 


A CHURCH IS BUILT 

	The Rev. J. F. DeVore completed construction of the Methodist Church and it was 
dedicated March 19, 1854. This pioneer minister approached doughty Captain Clanrick 
Crosby at his Tumwater mill with a request that he donate some lumber for the erection of 
the new church. 
	The New Englander regarded the scholarly looking clergyman with no great favor, 
and replied that he could have as much lumber as he could carry away by himself in one 
day. 
DeVore showed up at dawn the next day, carried from the mill enough lumber to build his 
church, and rafted it down the DesChutes waterway to his building site. History does not 
record Captain Crosby's reaction to the Methodist minister's unexpected vigor, and perhaps 
it is just as well. 
	At any event the building, constructed in the '50s with lumber rafted by an intrepid 
clergyman from Washington's first mill, served for many years as a church, as Epworth 
Hall, and later as a lodging house. It was destroyed by fire in 1949 - just short of its 100th 
birthday. 
	April 8, 1854, saw the first of a long series of Legislative Balls. It was held at the 
new Pacific Hotel under the supervision of the busy Colonel William Cock, and in the 
same month A. J. and N. P. Miller began to build a steam saw mill at North Olympia, two 
miles below town, "the largest lumbering establishment on the Sound."


p39

	A Mr. Henry Yesler had a steam saw mill operating at the upstart village of Seattle 
by this time, too. In May, Bishop Scott and the Rev. D. McCarthy announced a meeting to 
form an Episcopal Church, which was built on the present site of the Governor Hotel, and 
in July, Olympia's first Sunday school was opened. 
	In August, a pile driver began work on the waterfront, constructing a dock from the 
foot of Main Street to deeper water. Until the harbor was dredged in later years, deep water 
was a long way from town at low tide. 
	The original dock, known as Giddings Wharf, extended only 300 feet and was high 
and dry at low tide. By 1888, the dock extended a mile into the bay and was known far and 
wide as Olympia's "Mile Wharf." 
	Its term of usefulness extended into the early 20th century, although wharves north 
of town on deeper water were used by most of the sea-going ships which called at Olympia 
for lumber cargoes in the early days. 


MUD AND STUMPS 

	This year Governor Stevens purchased property in Olympia for his future home. 
Deeply disappointed at Secretary of War Jefferson Davis' orders to discontinue his railway 
survey, Stevens returned East, spent some time at the national capital, and began the return 
trip with his family from New York City on September 20. 
	They arrived at their new home in December. The city's most ardent boosters of 
today will seldom claim that Olympia is at its best in December, and in 1854 it was 
definitely on the bleak side. 
	The Governor's family was less than enthusiastic, this being the pen picture left in 
the family archives: "It was a dreary, dark December day. It had rained considerably. The 
road from Tumwater to Olympia was ankle deep in mud and thrided a dense forest with a 
narrow track. With expectations raised at the idea of seeing the Capital and chief town of 
the Territory, the weary travelers toiled up a small hill in the edge of the timber, reached 
the summit and eagerly looked to see the new metropolis. 
	"Their hearts sank with bitter disappointment as they surveyed the dismal and 
forlorn scene before them. A low, flat neck of land, running into the bay, down it stretched 
the narrow, muddy track, winding among the stumps, which stood thickly on either side. 
	"Twenty small wooden houses bordered the road, while back of them on the left 
and next to the shore were a number of Indian lodges, with canoes drawn up on the beach, 
and Indians and dogs lounging about." 


p40

	(The little hill mentioned is where the Masonic Temple now stands, opposite the 
Federal building. The site of the Indian camp is now Columbia Street, between Third and 
Fourth). 
	"There were only one or two buildings above, or south of Sixth Street. The public 
square was a tangle of fallen timber. Main Street terminated in Giddings' wharf, which was 
left high and dry at low tides. " 
	Kate Stevens Bates, one of the children who made this journey to Olympia in the 
early 1850s, lived her whole life in the city her father had made the capital of Washington. 
She died at Olympia in the late 1940s. 

	William Winlock Miller built a sawmill on the east side of Budd's Inlet a short 
distance north of town, late in the year, and the original Masonic Temple was built on the 
site of the present lodge building. 
	The town's first fraternal order, Olympia Lodge 5, Free and Accepted Masons, had 
received its chapter that year. 
	The second legislature moved from the Gold Bar Store and Restaurant to this new 
structure in 1855. In December, W. B. Goodell established a stage line between Olympia 
and Cowlitz Landing (Toledo). The stage left the Capitol on Tuesdays and Fridays, and 
connected with steamers for Monticello and Portland at Cowlitz Landing. 
	The fare was $3.50 to Grand Mound, $10 to Cowlitz. The lumbering coaches and 
lathered horses pulled up at a stage house where the [old] Olympia City Hall now stands. 
	Also on the high side were commodity prices in Olympia stores. Potatoes, $3 a 
bushel; flour, $10 for 100 pounds; butter, $1 a pound; onions, $4 a bushel; eggs $1 a 
dozen; tea, $1 a pound. 
	Pork at 20 cents a pound and coffee at 18 cents were reasonable as compared to 
present prices, but high when paid for in 1854 dollars. A mess of clams could be had for 
the digging and a big salmon could be purchased by non-anglers from an Indian for a bit 
(10 cents) 
	Sawed lumber was going at $20 per thousand; cedar, $30; shingles, $4.50; piles, 
per foot, 5 to 8 cents; and square timber, per foot, 12 to 15 cents. 
	In 1855, the legislature officially located the capital at Olympia (but the fight had 
really only begun), the city got regular steamer service to the still inferior but rapidly 
growing village of Seattle, and the Sound Indians were finally goaded into action - the 
Territory had a full- fledged Indian War on its hands. 
	The steamer Traveler was placed on a regular mail, passenger and freight run to 
Seattle by John G. Parker. This advertisement was inserted in the Pioneer & Democrat:


p41

	U.S. MAIL STEAMER TRAVELER 
	W. N. Horton, Master 
	FROM OLYMPIA via STEILACOOM to SEATTLE 
	Semi-Weekly 
	For freight or passage apply on board 

	The steamer, Fairy, was on the Steilacoom run, and the fabulous Puget Sound 
mosquito fleet was on its way. A later chapter will deal more fully with the history of the 
steamboat days on Puget Sound. 


THE INDIAN WAR 

	To contemporary citizens the Indian troubles overshadowed all other developments 
and the history of 1855-56 is largely a bloody and shameful one. 
	For several years, as some adventurers of limited vision and flexible conscience 
followed the tide of migration to the Sound country, renegade whites had been abusing and 
murdering Indians, and renegade Indians had been terrorizing isolated cabins and 
murdering an occasional white settler. 
	In 1854, a northern Indian of the Kake tribe was working at H. L. Butler's sawmill 
at Butler's Cove - the present site of the Olympia Golf and Country Club. A dispute arose 
over wages, and as a result of the controversy, he was shot and killed by one Burke, a 
white employee of the mill.


p42

	Butler and Burke were arrested for the murder, but to many of the settlers a "good 
Indian was a dead Indian," and the presiding judge, Squire Plumb (for whom Plumb 
Station was named) moved for the discharge of the accused white men "because Thurston 
County has no jail and it will be an expense to the county to retain them in custody"! 
	About the time of the murder, the northern tribes were en route home from their 
annual trip to the Sound, and the killing served as a pretext for widespread depredations on 
the settlements they passed. 
	Commander Swartout, in command of the U.S.S. Massachusetts, decided to teach 
them another lesson and raided their camp at Port Gamble, leaving blazing huts, smashed 
canoes and twenty-seven corpses on the beach. So far most of the killing had been done by 
the superior race, but they were soon to answer grievously for it. 
	By 1855, tension was gripping the whole Sound country. Secretary Mason was 
acting as governor during one of Stevens' many absences from the Territory - he was 
making treaties with the Nebraska Indians - and in October, Mason issued a proclamation 
calling for two companies of volunteers to consist of 86 officers and men. Olympia and 
Vancouver were designated as places of enrollment. 
	At that time, an inlet of the bay extended well into the present business district of 
the city, a southerly extension of the present east 


p43

waterway. The town of 1855 was well inside the limits of this bay and that formed by the 
west waterway or main harbor. 
	The jittery citizens decided to fortify the town, and soon a 12-foot log stockade was 
extended along both sides of Fourth Street from bay to bay. A block house was built at the 
corner of Fourth and Main (Capitol Way) with the town's trusty cannon mounted on it. 
	The first militia company enrolled at Olympia was designated as the Puget Sound 
Mounted Volunteers. Captain George Goudy commanded it; W. B. Affleck was first 
lieutenant and J. K. Hurd, second lieutenant. 
	A little later, Nathan Eaton, a pioneer of 1842, was authorized to form a company 
of Rangers; Jim McAllister was chosen first lieutenant, James Tullis, second lieutenant and 
A. M. Poe, third lieutenant. 
	McAllister didn't think the Nisquallys would fight. "They're so gentle I could drive 
the whole tribe before me like sheep," he said. 
	So confident was he of their friendship that he left his wife and five little girls, with 
three boys, the oldest 12, to guard them in the midst of the Nisqually camp when he went 
to join the Rangers. The McAllisters stayed in the farm house that was the gift of Leschi 
and his braves. 

	But Leschi had reached his decision. Governor Stevens was turning out treaties 
much as Detroit now turns out automobiles, and a lemon was bound to creep in now and 
then. The Medicine Creek Treaty, held on the Nisqually Flats east of Olympia, was one of 
the little governor's tragic mistakes. 
	He settled the destiny of the Nisqually Tribe by moving them from the lush bottom 
lands of the Nisqually to a rocky table-land. Crops could not be raised there, and there was 
no water for fishing. 
	Leschi, like Seattle, was noted for his friendship with the whites, but his first 
loyalty was to his tribe. He was convinced that to comply with the treaty meant a slow 
death by starvation for him and his people. 
	The opinion of historians differs as to whether Leschi signed the Medicine Creek 
Treaty. Mrs. George Blankenship says, in her history of Thurston County, "Sixty-two 
Indians signed. Leschi, an intelligent and designing Indian, who since has been 
immortalized by having a Seattle park named after him, being third. The first signer was 
Qui-ee-muth, Leschi's brother. Both these Indians met death as a reward for their 
treachery." 
	Clarence B. Bagley, in his history of King County, indicates doubt as to whether 
Leschi actually signed. The Indians' signatures were simply X's after their names, and 
could easily have been forged. Ezra Meeker is emphatic in denying that Leschi signed the 
treaty. Archie Binns gives this interpretation of the scene at Medicine Creek: 


p44

	" 'Leschi, sub-chief of the Nisquallys and Puyallups!' 
	"The name was always like a great cry . . . and by the gathering silence, you would 
think it some special meaning of hope or fear. In the silence, you became aware of the still 
treaty ground in the falling rain, and the great fir trees on a strange planet whirling through 
space. 

	"Under those mysterious trees, people clustered together to decide how things 
should be. And they tried to decide what was right or profitable by the color of each others' 
faces. But none of them knew what was right or what would be profitable. And they did 
not know what they were doing or how it would end... 
	"Looking at Leschi, you did not think about his race or yours. He was like a wise 
and homely friend you had always known and would trust in anything. He was standing 
beside the unpainted wooden table, and Colonel Shaw was holding out the ready-dipped 
pen. 
	"Leschi's arms were folded under the tawny Hudson's Bay blanket. He did not seem 
to notice the pen. In the stillness, you could hear the failing rain. Then Leschi spoke in 
Jargon. 
	" 'I will not put my name on that paper. My people need land they can plough, and 
prairie land for their herds. They need the creek for their canoes. I have told Governor 
Stevens these things. Even if my heart had changed, the need of my people has not 
changed.'"
 
	Binns writes that, "Colonel Simmons was beside Leschi again, with a colicky smile 
on his baby face, while he talked Soothingly in Nisqually. When that brought no result, he 
started to pat the chief's arm. His hand touched once, and then it was flung aside as Leschi 
whirled on him so swiftly that he blurred. 
" ' Klatawa!' 
	"Simmonds recoiled with a singed look, from the great explosion of a word. Leschi 
turned back to the angry little governor, and looked down at him with blazing eyes. 'We 
ask for farms, so we can live, and you give us gravel for a burial ground! We ask for bread 
and you give us a stone!' 
	" 'Aie lah, Leschi!' The name had become a great cry in more than the... 
imagination... 
	"Jim McAllister was on his feet, looking from Leschi, to whom he owed his farm 
and wealth and a thousand kindnesses, to the governor, to whom he owed his allegiance as 
a citizen. He looked irresolutely from one to the other. Then he sat down heavily. 
	"At the treaty table, they were trying to shout Leschi down. The furious little 
governor was shouting, 'Tell him he is a Klickitat! Tell him he has nothing to do with this 
treaty!' And Shaw repeated it in jargon. 


p45

	"In answer, the Nisqually drew a folded paper from inside his blanket. The others 
quieted as he held it up. 'If I am a Klickitat,' he said mildly, 'why did Governor Stevens 
give me this paper which makes me a little chief of the Nisquallys? That was yesterday.' 
	" 'Today I am a Klickitat with no business here. But if I had put mark on that paper, 
Governor Stevens would not remember my Klickitat mother. I would be a great Nisqually 
today. Governor Stevens made me a little chief so I would do my people a big wrong. This 
is my answer.' He held up the folded paper so every one could see, and tore it into long 
strips, which he dropped on the muddy ground. 
	" 'Aie Iah!" 
	"'Go away! The treaty makers were shouting. 'We don't want you here!'. . . 
	"Leschi raised his powerful voice. 'I am going, but hear one thing: burn that paper 
or it will burn you! That evil paper means war!' 
	"Settlers who had not been at the treaty believed Leschi had signed. The governor's 
friends who had been there told people who had not that Leschi had stepped up to the table 
and signed without protest, like all the others. 
	"In proof, there was a mark after Leschi's name on the treaty. The treaty was 
witnessed by some of the settlers and members of the Governor's party, including the 
Governor's 12-year-old son who had sat under a tree with the Indian boys, eating 
blackstrap and playing a jews-harp." 

	For a time nothing happened on the upper Sound. The treaty was not enforced and 
Leschi began his fall plowing. The governor, having stirred up a hornet's nest at his capital, 
had dashed back across the Rockies to make more rapid-fire treaties, driven on by war 
department demands. 
	Acting-governor Mason sent Puget Sound Volunteers to take Leschi into 
"protective custody." Leschi fled to the hostile camp in the White River area of King 
County and the die was cast. 
	Late in October, both Olympia volunteer companies left for the White River. Four 
more companies were mustered in as a reserve force, and stockades were built on 
Chambers Prairie and at Grand Mound. At Puyallup Crossing, Lieutenant McAllister, still 
counting on the gentleness of the Nisquallys, rode toward the hostile camp. 
	He and his companion, Connell, were fired on from ambush and killed. 
McAllister's faithful Indian farm hand, Chipwalen, escaped and returned to Nisqually in 
time to warn Mrs. McAllister and conduct her, with the eight children, to the stockade on 
Chambers Prairie. A. B. Moses and Col. Joseph Miles were killed a few days later.


p46

	In Olympia, word of the deaths cast a pall of gloom over the little settlement. The 
bodies of the three volunteers were brought in, and under a dismal fall of autumn rain, the 
settlers bowed their heads in grief over their first war dead. The three young men were 
buried on Chambers Prairie. 

	Only two other Thurston County settlers, William Northcraft and William White, 
were to be killed in the Indian war. A savage massacre of settlers occurred in the White 
River Valley, but the Nisquallys had no part in this. Most of the actual fighting took place 
there, in the Puyallup Valley and at Seattle. 
	There is a little doubt that Leschi, disgusted with his Klickitat and Duwamish allies' 
wanton butchery on the White River, stopped a planned campaign of extermination as far 
south as Olympia. 

	By December, 1855, most of the hostile Indians were scattered and hungry and 
Governor Stevens, back from his treaty making, decided the war was over. He disbanded 
the militia companies that month, and on January 24, 1856, sailed into Elliott Bay aboard 
the U.S.S. Active. 
	The citizens of Seattle were still expecting an Indian attack, but the fast-moving 
governor scoffed at their fears, stating in a speech, "I ton you there are not 50 hostile 
Indians in the territory, and I believe the citizens of New York and San Francisco will as 
soon be attacked by Indians as the town of Seattle!" 
	He urged the commander of the U.&& Decatur, which was moored in the harbor, to 
go on about his business. Fortunately for Seattle, Captain Gransvoort stayed where he was. 
Before dawn on January 26, Seattle was attacked without warning by a large and 
determined band of hostile Indians. 
	Had it not been for the naval cannon and shore parties of sailors and marines from 
the Decatur, the little town would probably have been annihilated. As it was, the fate of 
Washington's future metropolis hung by a thread until the Indians were finally beaten off. 
	When the Indians were repulsed at Seattle, the Indian War was really over. The 
chiefs had counted on the loot of Seattle to carry on their campaign, more regular army 
troops were coming into the territory, and the Indian's cause was lost.


p47

DEATH OF A CHIEF 

	Leschi led a little band of starving Indians over Natchez Pass to sanctuary with his 
mother's people, the Klickitats, but he was unable to resist the call of his beloved salt-
chuck, and he soon returned to Puget Sound. 
	Here he was betrayed by his nephew, Slugia, for a reward of 50 blankets, and was 
imprisoned at Fort Steilacoom in the custody of Colonel Casey of the U.S. Army. 
	The military authorities considered Leschi a prisoner of war and refused to treat 
him as a criminal. The little governor had been flouted by the big red man, and he pressed 
murder charges based on the death of Moses. 
	The jury disagreed at Leschi's first trial... and this is a telling point when it is 
considered that it was an all-white jury made up of settlers who had suffered bitterly in a 
long and vicious war, in an age when the life of a red man was of little importance at best. 
	The Pioneer and Democrat had this to say in its November 28, 1856, issue: "The 
failure of the jury to agree upon a verdict with the character of the evidence before them, 
we are informed, created general surprise. 
	"The attorneys for the prisoner expressed no doubt but that he would be convicted, 
and merely labored to discharge a duty imposed upon them professionally; and Judge 
Chenoweth is said to have been astonished when, on concluding his charge, he was 
informed that it was necessary to clear the courtroom, expecting that a verdict of guilty 
would be pronounced from the jury box." 
	Ezra Meeker was one of the four jurors who believed Leschi innocent. 
	At a second trial, the sub-chief of the Nisquallys was sentenced to hang on January 
22, 1858, at Fort Steilacoom. The Pierce County sheriff wasn't anxious to carry out the 
vindictive legal murder and the army refused to surrender Leschi to the hangman, anyway. 
	Finally, the Supreme Court met. They listened to an impassioned plea for mercy 
from old Doctor Tolmie of the Hudson's Bay Company, who had known Leschi longer 
than any white man. They heard the statements of army officers that they considered 
Leschi innocent. Then the Supreme Court resentenced Leschi. This time the Thurston 
County sheriff was charged with the execution, which was to take place on February 19.


p48

	An intimation of the strong feeling against Leschi in pioneer Olympia which 
extended its bitterness to those who defended him, may be gathered from this account of 
Leschi's final defense in the Pioneer and Democrat, a staunch partisan of Governor 
Stevens: 
	"Dr. William F. Tolmie, the chief factor of the Hudson's Bay Company at Nisqually 
in Pierce County, addressed the governor an elaborate and powerful appeal in Leschi's 
behalf, in which he exhibits an artful cunning, ingenious special pleading, worthy the 
representative of an unlawful illegitimate foreign corporation. 
	Lieutenant Kautz, the erstwhile 4th of July speaker, surveyed the area where Moses 
was killed and, according to the Pioneer and Democrat, "made a cautious and cunning 
affidavit that it was impossible for Leschi to have been present when the murder was 
committed." 
	Sheriff Hays wasn't around on execution day, so Deputy Mitchell went to 
Steilacoom with a posse of 12 men. Colonel Casey still felt he was turning an innocent 
man over to be hanged, and he was fighting mad. The execution took place well out on the 
prairie. The Colonel said they couldn't commit murder on army ground. 

	Leschi died without a struggle. It was, said witnesses, like hanging a statue. 
	"I felt that I was hanging an innocent man, and I believe it yet," said Charles 
Granger, the executioner, when he discussed the death of Leschi with Ezra Meeker in later 
years. 
	In his history of King County, Clarence Bagley says, "He (Leschi) was promised 
protection for himself and followers, in good faith so far as the army was concerned. His 
after-fate is too well known to be reviewed in this history; nor is it germane thereto. King 
County had no part in this wretched business." 
	Ironically, Governor Stevens revoked the Medicine Creek Treaty before Leschi's 
death, and the great Nisqually saw his people given the very land he had requested for 
them before the war. 
	The Nisquallys still live there, and Leschi, who had really won his fight, although it 
cost him his life, is buried in the heart of the great reservation he gave his people. 
	Qui-ee-muth, Leschi's brother, and chief of the Nisquallys, was captured near Yelm 
and taken to the governor's office at Olympia. There, late at night, he was murdered. 
	No one was arrested, but it appeared to be common knowledge among the settlers 
that Joseph Bunting, son-in-law of Jim McAllister, had shot and stabbed the chief to death 
with the connivance of his guards. 
	Many brutal and wanton murders of Indians were committed by white men, 
including a horrible slaughter of helpless women and children by Maxon's Volunteers, but 
none of the white murderers were brought to trial.


p49

MARTIAL LAW 

	By the time the war was really over, the governor, dead wrong in declaring peace to 
the citizens of Seattle on the eve of their greatest battle, refused to admit that peace was 
really here. 
	Settlers persisted in returning to their homesteads for the spring planting, and a 
group of settlers, removed from their claims near Steilacoom by the governor, had the 
temerity to apply for a writ of habeas corpus. 
	Judge Lander was so disrespectful as to hold court against the governor's wishes to 
hear their case. Stevens declared marital law in April, 1856, and the territory was treated to 
the spectacle of militia kicking in the doors of a judicial chamber, of a Supreme Court 
Justice harried from town to town, and of a U.S. Marshal, trying to serve a contempt of 
court order on the governor, being ejected from the executive chambers by a group of 
militia officers, territorial officials and citizens. 
	Martial law was ended May 24, 1856, and Governor Stevens paid Judge Lander a 
$50 fine for contempt of court. 
	In October, 1856, the following advertisement appeared in the Pioneer and 
Democrat:


p50

GENERAL ORDERS NO. 7 
Head Quarters, W.T. Volunteers 
Olympia, Oct. 30, 1856 
1st The Volunteers of Washington Territory of both staff and line, are hereby disbanded. 

	The Indian War ended as it had begun, on a note of tragic blundering and pathetic 
comedy. 


AFTERMATH 

	The war left the Territory decimated and shaky. Barns and cabins were burned, 
stock slaughtered and land untitled while the men were off with the volunteers. Olympia 
suffered less than many of the settlements, however, and the Pioneer and Democrat 
sounded a note of optimism in the autumn of 1856. 
	Said the editor on November 14: "Four years ago, where stood but a few solitary 
buildings, OLYMPIA may be found, with its numerous stores, workshops and scores of 
neat, substantial dwellings. 
	"In its vicinity, Swanville (now a part of the city east of East Bay Drive) had sprung 
from chaos, New Market has become a place of considerable business, and the once dense 
forests of fir lining the bay on either side are fast being supplanted by cultivated farms." 
	The harbor was doing well, too, as this November 28 news item attests: HARBOR 
OF OLYMPIA - During the past week, four vessels have been lying at anchor in the harbor 
of Olympia. 
	"Three of them belong to 'Kendall Co's line, viz: the clipper barks Live Yankee and 
Samuel Merritt, the bark Sarah Warren, and the schooner Rob Roy, McLane, master. 
	"The first three named were freighted with merchandise for the different parts of 
the Sound, and will clear with lumber, timbers & etc. for San Francisco. 
	"This is the first time for the last year that four merchant vessels of large 
dimensions have been anchored in our harbor at one time, and would seem to augur that a 
revival of business is at hand." 
	A little later, foreign trade had started, the paper reporting: "The Prussian bark Ica, 
Schwencke, master, is now loading with lumber at North Olympia. She is a vessel of 500 
tons burthen. The cargo is destined for the South American market.


p52

	Olympia entered its 10th year, as an incorporated town. Articles of incorporation 
were filed on January 29, 1859, but the entire county had a population of less than 1,000 
by 1860. It was another decade - 1870 - before Olympia could boast a population of more 
than 1,000. 

	The census figures of that year showed the capital city with 1,203 inhabitants. 
Thurston County had 2,246. The second city of the territory in 1870 was Seattle, with a 
population of 1,142. King County had 2,164. 
	The Indian War seriously retarded the territory's development and the outbreak of 
the Civil War in 1861 almost halted the westward flood of immigration. 


PROGRESS IN THE SIXTIES 

	The growth of Olympia and Thurston County was gradual but continuous during 
the decade 1860 to 1870. The fight for the capital was waged almost continuously. 
Portland interests wanted the capitol at Vancouver. 
	At one time, it was announced that the legislature had actually moved the 
headquarters of government, but a legal technicality saved the day. Again the capitol was 
retained in Olympia by one vote. 
	In 1860, the town's first hook-and-ladder company was formed, and Mt. Baker was 
reported in eruption, "throwing off clouds of smoke and steam. " 
	The famous Washington Standard, Olympia's second newspaper, was founded by 
John Miller Murphy, who was to become one of the state's great newsmen, and the Pioneer 
and Democrat was sold to Jaxnes Lodge. 
	Bridges were built connecting Swantown on the east and the west side district with 
the original site of Smithfield. The Swantown Bridge, extending from the present Jefferson 
Street to East Bay, later collapsed, depositing a herd of cattle in the mud flats. 
	In 1861 the people of Tumwater gave their Olympia neighbors a bad time, trying to 
annex the county seat for their community. Olympia, goaded by capitol-grabbers, offered 
the town's public square to the county if it would build a courthouse there, and so kept the 
seat of county government.


p53

	Later, it was discovered that this deal was illegal, Edmund Sylvester having 
donated the square to the town for park purposes only. Eventually the courthouse was built 
elsewhere, and the old town square is now beautiful little Sylvester Park in the heart of the 
city's business district. 
	News of the death of General Isaac Ingalls Stevens reached Olympia on October 
18, 1862. The little governor had died a hero's death at the Battle of Chantilly. 
	The Pioneer and Democrat was now being published as the Overland Press by a 
combative journalist named B. F. Kendal. An angry reader attempted to whip Editor 
Kendall on the street and was shot, but not killed, in self-defense. The editor's version of 
the affair, as printed in his paper, apparently prompted the choleric subscriber's son to enter 
the newspaper office and murder Kendall. 
	The gun used in the crime was traced to a prominent territorial official. It was 
believed at the time that the newsman, too outspoken for his own good, was the victim of a 
plot among political enemies. Olympia had its first "big murder story" and "political 
scandal" in one package. 


p54

	On Sunday evening, September 4, 1864, the telegraph was completed to Olympia. 
	Territorial Governor Pickering dispatched a congratulatory message to President 
Lincoln. 
	The next day the marvelous brass key in the Olympia telegraph office chattered and 
this message was copied in the operator's fluent copperplate script: 

	"Washington, D. C. 
	Sept. 6, 1864 

	"Gov. Pickering, Olympia, W. T.: 
	"Your patriotic dispatch of yesterday received and will be published. 
	
	A. Lincoln" 

	Olympia was strongly pro-union in its Civil War sympathies. John Miller Murphy, 
though a Democrat, favored the preservation of the Union at any cost and reflected that 
attitude in his Washington Standard. The town was almost wrecked in the victory 
celebration when the war ended. 
	There were still lusty pioneers around in 1865, and two of them, James Pray, saloon 
owner and veteran of the California Vigilantes, and Benjamin Cleal, an ancient mariner, 
decided to fire victory salutes with the town's fabled Indian War cannon, which still 
reposed on the waterfront at the foot of Main Street. 
	They used large quantities of powder, and as the ancient cannon warmed up it 
began bounding backward in great leaps as it recoiled. 
	It progressed up Main Street backward, knocking out windows at every blast, until 
it arrived at Pray's saloon, near Fourth, where the victory celebration was continued. Mr. 
Pray paid for his hearty patriotism by having all his glasses and windows and most of his 
furniture broken. 
	In 1865, the long-awaited wagon road across the Cascades was finished; the 
pioneer town pump at Fourth and Main, where the Chambers Building now stands, gave 
way to a cistern and water mains; and, by 1866, newspapers were coming to the little 
community in a flurry of newsprint. 


RAILROAD! 

	The 1868 legislature was "a most acrimonious one," with brawls and fisticuffs 
frequent in the halls of state, the local saloons and on the streets. The first Olympia city 
library and the first city hall were built in 1869. 


p55

	A wooden water pipe company, which was to develop into one of Olympia's major 
industries for many years was established in Tumwater in 1868. 

	By 1871 Governor Stevens' vision of a northern transcontinental railway was 
nearing reality. The Northern Pacific Railroad was approaching Puget Sound and the 
location of its western terminus was the burning question of the day. 
	It was taken for granted that the railway terminus would become the greatest city of 
the territory. Seattle and Olympia were making frantic efforts to get the steel rails, and in 
November, 1871, the road was within 15 miles of Olympia, with the location of the 
terminus still undecided. 
	The company asked a right-of-way to Budd's Inlet, and the town went on an 
optimism jag. Property values sky-rocketed. 
	The Puget Sound Land Company, a subsidiary of the Northern Pacific and bought 
up large tracts of land on Budd's Inlet in the name of one Ira Bradley Thomas. Before the 
rails reached Olympia, Thomas died. 
	Rather than face the legal delays of probating his estate, the company quickly 
bought up new land near Old Tacoma and told the Northern Pacific to change its terminus 
to that location. 


p56

	Had an obscure business man, Ira Thomas, lived just a little longer, Olympia would 
undoubtedly have become the western terminus of the first northern transcontinental 
railway and the site of the present city of Tacoma might still be a comparative wilderness. 

	The year 1872 saw the end of Olympia's dream of becoming the great city of 
Washington. The failure of the railway to end its line on Budd's Inlet blasted that hope. 
That year ended the city's pioneer era, too, and it was ushered out with a severe earthquake 
in November - the worst in the city's history to that time. 
	The Society of Thurston Pioneers long ago made residence in the county before 
1872 a requirement for membership. The true pioneers of the '40s and '50s would never 
concede that those who came in the '60s and '70s were more than "early settlers," and those 
who came after 1872 were forever doomed to remain "Che Chacos." 
	Of late years, however, it has become common to confer pioneer rank upon those 
who lived in the area before the territory achieved statehood in 1889. 
	The year 1872 also saw the end of the last phases of the ancient boundary disputes 
between England and the United States, with the northern boundary finally located as it 
stand today. 
	From 1873 to 1889, the period during which Washington remained a territory, 
Olympia and Thurston County made slow progress. The location of the railway at Tacoma 
took much trade and industry from the head of the Sound, and Seattle's amazing 
development was drawing a large segment of the territory's population to that booming 
city. 
	Seattle's "skid-road" was wide open. Olympia was respectable and sedate. The lusty 
workingmen of the territory preferred to spend their money in Seattle. 
	The Northern Pacific, which dealt a death blow to Olympia's dreams of easy 
commercial greatness did, however, bring a measure of prosperity to other Thurston 
County communitites. 

	In 1852 Stephen Hodgson took a donation claim on the prairie some 15 miles south 
of Olympia. It gradually developed into a small settlement, and in 1872 the Northern 
Pacific Railroad established a station there. 
	Several myths are prevalent as to how Tenino got its name . . . that it was from the 
number 10-9-0 on a railway surveyor's stake or on an early locomotive. 
	The fact is that the railway used the Chinook word meaning "junction" in naming 
the station Tenino. It referred to the junction of the old military roads from Vancouver to 
Steilacoom and Olympia, which branched at that point.


p57

	Tenino achieved commercial importance in 1888 when its magnificent sandstone 
quarries were discovered. Tenino sandstone was the approved building material for most of 
the state's greatest buildings, until the use of structural steel and concrete supplanted it. 
	Although the quarries are no longer in regular operation, Tenino has enjoyed a 
modest but consistent growth throughout the years. 

	The first settler on a small prairie south of Tenino was Aaron Webster, who came 
to the Sound country in 1854. In the Chinook language, the stream crossing the Webster 
claim was Skookum Chuck - strong water. 
	In 1857, Webster harnessed the strong water to a mill wheel and turned out lumber 
for the neighboring settlers. When the mill went into operation, he sold his farm to Oliver 
Shead, who named the place Seatco - a Chinook word meaning ghost, or devil. 
	As early as 1852, large coal deposits had been found in the area, and later the coal 
fields were purchased by J. B. David of Portland and Samuel Coulter. 
	When Coulter and David met with William Buckley of the railway company to 
decide on a name for the new station there, the picturesque Seatco was abandoned and they 
coined a new word by taking the two first letters of each of their own names. Bu-Co-Da 
was the result. 
	Mr. Shead preferred his Indian word and continued to call his townsite by that 
name. Seatco remained a town with a railroad station named Bucoda until 1890, when the 
legislature made it officially Bucoda. 
	Bucoda, or Seatco, was the site of the first penitentiary in Washington. At the 
legislature of 1874, Sheriff Billings of Thurston County and Sheriff Smith of Pierce 
County got a bill passed turning the territorial prisoners over to them for contract labor. 

	Shead put up the money to finance them and a timber prison with well-spiked, 12-
inch walls was built at Seatco to house the convicts.  This continued as the territorial prison 
until 1888, when a new one was built at Walla Walla. 
	Samuel James had staked a claim at Grand Mound Prairie in 1852, and the James 
name is still a prominent one in the Rochester community. George Edwards and John 
Edgon had settled on Yelm Prairie in 1850, and they were joined by James Longmire and 
James Burns. 
	William McLane settled at the head of Eld Inlet in 1852, and that rural community 
still bears his name.


p58

NARROW GAUGE RAILROAD 

	When the people of Olympia had somewhat recovered from the stunning failure of 
the Northern Pacific to touch their city, they took matters into their own hands. 
	The county commissioners floated a $75,000 bond issue and a new narrow gauge 
railway was built to connect Olympia with the main line at Tenino. The first little train 
clattered into Tenino carrying a fun load of happy Olympia excursionists in 1878. 
	The little road was operated as a local project until 1890, when it was purchased by 
the Port Townsend Southern Railway. The same year, the Northern Pacific relented 
somewhat, and built a branch line from Tacoma to Grays Harbor by way of Olympia. 
	In 1903, the N. P. bought the 15-mile Port Townsend Southern, and the historic 
little railway soon passed into oblivion. The long rail way trestles on the west side of 
Budd's Inlet are the only present-day reminders of the old Port Townsend Southern. 
	The little trains used to enter town from the south by way of a trestle west of the 
present capitol group, pass under the West Side Bridge and terminate their run at a depot 
alongside the trestle on West Bay Drive.


p59

WASHINGTON STATE 

	Washington became a state in 1889, and to the people of the territorial capital, it 
meant another fight to get their city named state capital. This involved undergoing the new 
ordeal of a state-wide vote on the location. 
	Although various other cities put up a strong campaign, Olympia managed to get 
the most votes, 25,490, but Ellensburg got 14,711, Centralia 607, Yakima 314, Pasco 130, 
and scattered locations, 1,088. 
	Since the law required a majority of all votes cast, jittery Olympians faced another 
vote in 1890. The great Seattle fire intervened, and the Olympia city fathers dispatched the 
town's fine new steam pumper to the stricken city by fast steamer. Then they gave $500 of 
the taxpayers' money to Seattle as a relief donation.


p60

	There was some grumbling about this, of course, but it proved a wise investment. 
Grateful and growing Seattle threw its support behind Olympia in the capital fight and next 
year Olympia got 37,413 votes, Ellensburg only 7,722. 
	The capital stayed in Olympia, but at that time the state capitol consisted of one 
frame building, which was located on the present site of the Insurance Building. 

	Bills authorizing completion of a new capitol building were vetoed by the governor 
in 1897 and 1899. Finally, in 1901, the Thurston County Court House was purchased by 
the state and enlarged for a capitol building. Tacoma interests made a final attempt to grab 
the capitol for the City of Destiny, but their measure was defeated. 
	Olympians breathed somewhat easier when the big stone building with its tall, 
eight-sided clock tower was acquired by the state, but the more pessimistic citizens, 
plagued for decades by the attempts of other 


p65

cities to take over the headquarters of state government, never really relaxed until the 
present magnificently Roman-Doric capitol group was completed in 1935. 
	Then they felt that the capitol was firmly attached to Olympia with a $15 million 
anchor. 
	Although the buildings were paid for from state timber grants and used up no tax 
money, the group was completed in a state-wide rumble of disapproval. 
	These were depression times, and Washington was still only one life-time away 
from the puncheon-floored settler's cabin on the beach. Imported marbles, bronzes and 
seamless carpets were viewed by many as a bit "highfalutin."


p68

	But the buildings crown their hilltop in undeniable grandeur, ruled over by the 
great dome of the Legislative Building - one of the highest in the world - and with the 
completion of Capitol Lake, citizens get more than $15 million worth of reflected beauty. 
	The Old Capitol in downtown Olympia still serves as a state office building, having 
survived a great fire, which destroyed its old-world clock tower, and a recent earthquake 
that nearly wrecked the new buildings on the hill. 


THE NINETIES 

	The first years of statehood were boom times for Olympia and by 1890, it had 
grown to a town of 4,698 inhabitants, but the great depression of 1893, coupled with the 
emergence of Seattle and Tacoma as the "big cities" of the Puget Sound country, hit the 
capital hard. 
	Times were bad, and it is said of that period that many of the citizens consumed 
clams until the town's stomachs rose and fell with the tide. Still the '90s were years of 
progress - Olympia's franchise years. 
	The Sunset Telephone and Telegraph Company put in the first telephone lines in 
1889. Street railway franchises were granted, E. T. Young was given permission to erect 
electric light poles along the city streets, Western Union was allowed to put in telegraph 
poles, and the Olympia Water Company laid plans for the modern water system which met 
the city's needs until the great McAllister Springs development was completed in 1948. 
	In 1894, the federal government began the harbor dredging, with silt confined 
behind bulkheads, which resulted in Olympia's modern port and industrial districts. 
	The fabled Olympia Hotel was built in 1890 at Eighth and Main. A gigantic 
gingerbread edifice, it was the city's pride, but didn't fare well financially. It was later 
destroyed in a 1904 by fire. 
	The 1900 census showed a population loss - a drop to 3,863. This was the first time 
this had happened since the California gold rush days. By 1910, the city had come back 
with a vengeance, almost doubling its population to 6,000. 
	Even during the depression days of falling population figures, things had been 
accomplished. The street railway system was built in 1890. 
	The rolling stock consisted of two horse-cars, and the line extended from Puget 
Street west to Main Street and south to Maple Park. In 1892, the franchise and equipment 
were sold to the Olympia Light & Power Company and an electric line was projected.


p69

	Of the street cars, a March 4, 1892 newspaper boasted, in anticipation, that they 
"are to be the best in all respects and will be finished in white, with gold trimmings." The 
gold-trimmed cars began operating in July and were declared an immediate success. 
	Said the press of July 22, 1892, "The inauguration of the electric street car system 
in Olympia marks another epoch in the progress of the capital city. The first street car 
passed over the track of the Olympia Light & Power Company yesterday at 4:30, with 
Superintendent Shock at the electric lever. 
	"The passengers on the memorable occasion, besides the news correspondent, were 
George D. Shannon, Robert Frost, George L. Sickles, Thomas Henderson Boyd, C. T. 
Whitney, A. S. Gills and L. B. Faulkner." Mr. Faulkner, who later became president of the 
Olympia Light and Power Company and superintendent of the street railway system, still 
resides in Olympia (1950). 
	The news story continued, "The car, as soon as the current was turned on, moved 
like a thing of life, smoothly and without friction, and responded steadily to the will of its 
master as if endowed with reason. 
	"People appeared on the street and at doors and windows all along the route and 
waved hats and handkerchiefs in greeting this new and tangible evidence of progress." 
	The electric line was extended to the West Side and to Tumwater on the south, with 
five cars in operation - three closed and two open. They were advertised as running to 
Tumwater every hour and giving seven-minute service within the city.


p70

	Fall rains brought problems to Superintendent Shock of the street railway. On 
September 23, the morning paper reported, "The open street cars have been doing a 
shocking business this week. 
	"When the interior woodwork became wet, the electric current played like the 
aurora borealis among the passengers and converted the whole vehicle into immense 
Leyden jars, ready to discharge a current whenever a proper connection was made. They 
were, of necessity, promptly withdrawn from service." 
	Olympia was learning that progress is not without its painful side. 
	The street railways system remained in operation until 1933, when the present 
[1950] bus transportation system was installed. 
	The second decade of the 20th century saw a modest advance in population to 
7,795 by 1920. By 1930, the census figures showed 11,733 and those of 1940, 13,254. The 
1949 estimated population was between 16 and 18 thousand, with approximately 50 
thousand in the immediate trading area.


p72

NEWSPAPERS 

	The journalistic history of Olympia is a long and complicated one, and deserves a 
short chapter of its own. 
	As has been stated, the territory's first newspaper, the Columbian, changed hands 
and names frequently. Established in 1852, it became the Pioneer in 1853. A new paper, 
the Northwest Democrat appeared on the scene in 1855, but since its politics agreed with 
those of the Pioneer, the two papers merged to form the Pioneer and Democrat. 
	In 1860, the historic Washington Standard was established by John Miller Murphy, 
who had come to Olympia as a small boy in the early '50s. Murphy was to become a dean 
of Washington journalists and a real civic leader. 
	He brought the first steam powered press to the territory and later built the 
magnificent Olympia Theater on Fourth Avenue. Although Murphy was a Democrat, 
Republican forces induced him to establish a paper in Olympia to promote the Republican 
policy of national unity, which was to result in the Civil War. 
	The citizens of Olympia were to fete Murphy at a great banquet in 1910 
commemorating the Standard's first half-century of publication without missing an issue.


p73

	The Pioneer and Democrat expired in 1861 and was revived as the Overland Press 
the same year. When its publisher was shot, the Overland Press became the Pacific 
Tribune in 1864, and the little Ramage hand press was sold and moved to Seattle. 
	The Washington Democrat was established in 1864 and lasted until 1865. The 
Territorial Republican, founded in 1867, was just as short- lived. 
	The first attempt at daily publication was made by the Tribune in 1867. This was 
too much for its resources and the plant and subscription lists were put up at sheriff's sale. 
	John Miller Murphy, rival publisher, bought much of the essential equipment, 
including the Tribune's subscription lists - and gave ot [sic] back to the Tribune's 
publisher. 
	Perhaps the end of our pioneer era won't really have come until there are no more 
George Bushes and John Miller Murphys left in the land. 

	The Tribune moved to Seattle and then to Tacoma, where it prospered, and the 
name is still in use there. A radical Republican paper, the Transcript, was founded in the 
post-civil war period and lasted until 1885, and in 1867, a temperance paper, the Echo, 
began publication. 


p74

	The Puget Sound Courier was moved from Port Townsend to Olympia in 1871, 
and its publisher, Clarence Bagley, joined forces with Murphy of the Standard to run the 
Temperance Echo out of business. Apparently the pioneer newsmen, like many of their 
present-day brethren, were not in favor of militant teetotalism. 
	Bagley was an ardent Republican and Murphy was a Democrat. They named their 
combined Standard-Courier the Daily Olympian and agreed that each would edit the paper 
on alternate days, keeping it strictly neutral in politics. 
	During Murphy's absence from town, Bagley's father, the Rev. Daniel Bagley, 
slipped a great deal of strong Republican propaganda in the paper's forms. When Murphy 
returned, he said nothing, but when his day as editor came up he issued an extremely 
Democratic Daily Olympian. 


p75

	This so enraged Bagley that he moved his equipment from the printing shop, but 
the hated Echo was still in business, so he returned, a truce was declared, and in 1874, the 
Olympian succeeded in forcing the Echo out of business. 
	Then they went their separate ways and the Olympian was no more until 1889 
when Murphy published it as a daily for about a year, with Olympia real estate men 
underwriting it. The theory was that a daily would add prestige for real estate boom and 
capital-securing purposes. 

	The Courier combined with the Daily Critic as the Daily Critic and Weekly 
Courier in 1884. These were extremely Republican papers and in 1885 they emerged into 
one paper, the Republican Partisan. 
	The Partisan, in turn, became the Olympia Tribune in 1890 and published as a 
daily until 1893, when it combined with a new Daily Olympian as the Olympian-Tribune. 
In 1903, this became the Olympia Daily Recorder.


p76

	Then the Olympian and Recorder published as separate dailies until 1927, the 
Recorder being purchased by the Olympian and issued as an evening paper, while the 
Olympian remained a morning edition. 
	In 1927, the morning and evening editions became the morning and evening 
Olympian, while the Evening Recorder discontinued. The morning edition of the Olympian 
has also since been discontinued. 
	The Weekly Capital was printed from 1897 to 1901, the Olympia Chronicle from 
1899 to 1927, the Washington Saturday Review from 1909 to 1910, and the Anti-
Imperialist in 1900. 
	In 1913, six papers were printed in Olympia: the Chronicle, the Independent, 
Olympian, Recorder, Washington Standard and State Capitol Record (a legislative digest). 
	The first paper was printed in Tenino in 1880. The Tenino Herald's life was a short 
one, but it was the forerunner of the present Thurston County Independent. 
	The Olympia High School News, predecessor of the present Olympus, began 
publication in 1893. 
	At the present time, Olympia's newspaper needs are met by one evening daily and 
one weekly newspaper. The Olympia News was founded in 1922.


p77

STEAMBOAT DAYS 

	The period from 1872, the end of the pioneer era, to 1920, the beginning of the 
gasoline era, was the golden age of steamboating on Puget Sound. The little sailing vessels 
of the '40s and '50s scattered settlements about the Sound. The steamboats drew them 
together into a civilization. 
	Steamboats were the only means of comfortable travel on the new frontier, and they 
were more than that to the people they served. When there was a fair or a picnic or a 
potlatch, the little steamers and the big were there. 
	Citizens from the smallest and farthest settlement chartered their local steamer and 
traveled to the scene of glamour, like owners of a private yacht. The steamboats were 
personal and friendly, and they had a lovely steamboat smell of steam and hot paint and 
salt water. 
	They stopped to pick up the families of isolated settlers in rowboats, and take them 
to town, and they stopped to unload a few sacks of feed for them on the way back. 


p78

	They were slow, the slim white steamers with their tall, black smokestacks and 
beating paddle wheels, but they seldom dropped a passenger onto a mountain top or 
swerved over a cliff at 60 miles an hour. The people had an affection for the steamboats 
that has no counterpart in this age of high speed, streamlined, impersonal transportation. 
	The Hudson's Bay steamer Beaver, built in England in the 1830s and navigated to 
the Columbia River under sail, was the first steamer to beat the waters of the Sound with 
its paddle wheels, plying between the company posts at Vancouver and Nisqually. 
	The first American steamboat was the little side-wheeler, Fairy, brought to Puget 
Sound on the deck of the bark, Sarah Warren, in 1853. She plied intermittently between 
Seattle and Olympia, and was later put on the Olympia-Steilacoom run. 
	In 1857, her boiler exploded near the Steilacoom dock, and she sank while 
operating on this route. The pioneer steamer, Traveler, was also brought up from 
California on the deck of a sailing ship and assembled on the beach a mile north of Priest 
Point in 1855. 
	She made regular trips between Olympia and Seattle for some time and eventually 
sank off Port Townsend. The iron propellor steamer, Major Tompkins, began the Olympia-
Victoria run in 1854, but was wrecked outside Victoria Harbor in 1855. The wooden 
propellor steamer, Constitution, replaced her. 

	In 1859, the fabulous old side-wheeler, Eliza Anderson, began plying between 
Olympia and Vancouver, B.C., on a weekly mail schedule. The run was a highly profitable 
one and many other steamers - Enterprise, Alexandria, Josie McNear, New World, Alida 
and Wilson G. Hunt made a losing fight for lucrative business, but were either beaten off 
with a rate war or bought off with hard cash by the Anderson's owners. The Eliza Anderson 
was tied up to her wharf in 1870, and her owners put the beautiful new steamer, Olympia, 
on her run.


p79

	The Anderson was wrecked while on her way to join the Alaska gold rush in 1897, 
but legend has it that she "earned her weight in gold" for her owners during her long 
career. 
	An old schedule at the State Library indicates that in 1870, the Anderson and Alida 
were plying between Olympia and Victoria, and the Varuna and Chehalis from Olympia to 
Seattle. The Chehalis, a stern- wheeler, was built at Tumwater; the Alida at Olympia. 
	During most of those years, the Anderson's owners had the mail contract, but in 
1872, a Portland firm, the Starrs, underbid them and put another historic boat on the run - 
the North Pacific. 
	The Olympia and the North Pacific made an epic race from Victoria to Olympia in 
June, the North Pacific winning the money bets on the short dash to Port Townsend, but 
the Olympia winning the long pull, up-Sound, to the capital city. 
	Early in September, 1871, the new, 100-foot stern-wheeler, Zephyr, was launched 
at Seattle and placed on the Olympia-Seattle run, which she maintained for many years. 
	By the early 1900s, the Greyhound, a speed queen of the Sound in her day, was 
plying between Olympia and Tacoma, and the big Multonomah was running from Olympia 
to Seattle. The Greyhound connected with the Flyer for Seattle.


p80

	In 1911, the beautiful propellor-steamer, Nisqually, steamed into Olympia harbor 
on her maiden trip and was placed on the Tacoma- Olympia route. She was slim and fleet - 
140 feet long and 23 feet wide - and she could slash her way from Olympia to Tacoma 
against the tide in two hours. 
	But the day of the steamboat was almost over, and the Nisqually didn't last long. By 
1917, the little 112-foot propellor Magnolia could handle all the business there was, and 
when she made her last trip, trundling north down Budd Inlet, the era had ended. 
	Other little steamers served Olympia and the bays and inlets of the upper Sound. 
The Sol G. Simpson and City of Shelton were the last and best-known of the Shelton boats, 
although the little stern-wheeler, Willie, which preceded them, was well-known in her day. 
In the early 1900s, the tiny steamer, Mizpah, plied between Olympia, Oyster Bay and 
Kamilche. 
	The Mizpah sank once and burned to the water's edge, but she is still in service 
(1950) in Olympia harbor as a diesel tug, owned by her first skipper, Captain Volney C. P. 
Young of the Capitol City Tug Company.


p81

	In 1911, when the Nisqually was the pride of Olympia, everyone thought the Sound 
would go on building bigger and faster steamers forever. 
	Ten years later, the mosquito fleet was almost gone, swept from the bays and inlets 
on a cloud of carbon-monoxide and the stench of gasoline. The deep-sea trade had long 
since departed for the lower Sound ports, and Olympia turned her back on the water. 
	The city's interest didn't focus on the waterfront again until 1925 when, with the 
mud flats which had choked the harbor dredged away and confined behind bulkheads to 
form a deep-water harbor, the Japanese steamer, Milan Maru, entered the new Port of 
Olympia and began loading a big lumber cargo for the Orient. 
	From then on, deep sea ships began calling regularly again at the only capital port 
in America, and Olympia has regained her place among the ocean terminals of Puget 
Sound. 
	The present harbor is a much different place from the waterfront of pioneer days, 
where Duwamish squaws dug clams on the mudflats and the flat-bottomed paddle-wheel 
steamers grounded at their moorings out at the end of the long wharf when the tide was 
low.


p82

ENDURING INDUSTRY 

	Olympia has many ties with the past, among them pioneer business firms that have 
grown from small beginnings with the city. Bettman's Clothing Store is the oldest of these. 
	Louis Bettman came to Olympia in 1853 and opened a general merchandise store in 
the tiny hamlet. He prospered with the city in which he had faith and died at his adopted 
home in 1904. The business has continued under the same name for almost a century. 
	Millard Lemon was born while his parents' covered wagon creaked toward the 
promised land of Puget Sound, and he, too, devoted his life to the development of 
Olympia, building up the present Casco Company, which is now managed by his son, Gary 
Lemon. 
	Gustave Rosenthal arrived in Olympia in 1863 and opened a general store at 
Second and Main. That firm is still in business under the ownership of M. M. Morris.


p83

	I. Harris arrived in Oregon Territory by ship in 1853 and entered the general 
merchandise business in what is now Eastern Washington. In 1870, he opened the dry 
goods store in Olympia which in 1949 became the big Miller's Department Store. 
	Two years later, in 1872, the Talcott Brothers established their jewelry firm, which 
in 1949 was operated by three generations of the family, including one of the founders. 
	The Olympia Oyster Company was established in 1878. 
	the Mottman Mercantile Company began in 1880 as Toklas end Kaufman, the 
present building [NW corner Capitol and Fourth] being completed in 1891. In the 1850s, 
C. E. Williams conducted a store there, and his house, which now stands between the 
YMCA and Sunset Building, was moved from Fourth and Capitol Way to make way for 
the Mottman Building.


p84

	The Olympia Brewing Company, the oldest of the city's larger industries, was 
established in 1896 at Tumwater where, fittingly enough, the first Washington industry had 
been begun 50 years before by Michael Simmons. The Olympia Brewing Company 
brought not only a payroll, but valuable civic leadership to the city. 
	Leopold Schmidt, its founder, worked always for the welfare of Olympia, and he it 
is, with P. M. Troy, pioneer lawyer and father of the present State Attorney General, Smith 
Troy, to whom the people of Olympia owe their beautiful civic playground, Priest Point 
Park. 
	Troy, as city attorney, saved the land from speculators, and Leopold Schmidt 
provided most of the equipment and the Swiss chalet which have been used and enjoyed by 
thousands of Olympians for many years.


p85

THE WORK OF A CENTURY 

	Olympia has matured gracefully in the century just gone by, and it has mellowed 
more than most western cities in the changing. 
	The muddy, stump-lined streets of 1850 thunder now with motor traffic, and where 
at night the somber firs were once reflected in a qui- et bay, with only the stars and the dim 
light from settlers' cabins to hold back the darkness, neon and mercury vapor flare in the 
night. 
	The log trading post of Edmund Sylvester has expanded into hundreds of retail 
stores. Five theaters and a radio station have sup- planted General Rag and his pioneer 
vaudeville of a century ago. 
	Trains and huge buses and space-eating airliners now serve the city whose fathers 
hacked their way over the Cowlitz Trail, and great ocean ships are moored in the waters 
once ploughed by the little paddle steamers.


p86

	A hundred service stations dispense the magic liquid that brought these changes, 
and to the casual observer, Olympia is a pulsing, noisy, modern city. 
	But in the quiet residential streets, where old houses built of timbers hewed by 
Clanrick Crosby still stand, and on the still shores of Puget Sound, where Seattle and 
Leschi once walked with loving feet, and in the marble halls of state where Isaac Stevens' 
picture hangs, you may feel the quiet calm of a city which has lived a century with a 
remarkable tolerance and calm and lack of violence. 
	Olympia escaped the worst hatreds of the Indian War and of the Chinese troubles, 
the great fires which ushered in statehood year to many Washington cities, and the I.W.W. 
troubles and the other upheavals that wracked the new frontier around her. 
	Basically, Olympia is serene and calm. It is a lovely little city which is sure of its 
place in a green and lovely land. It is a good place to live. Perhaps the pioneer colonel had 
a vision of this future city when a century ago he said: 

	"Olympia's gods might view with grace 
	Nor scorn so fair a dwelling place."


p87

CHINOOK JARGON WAS HELP TO PIONEERS 

	Language differences have many times caused misunderstandings leading to woe 
and misery and war among humans since the beginning of history. 
	Just as now, since 1945, at least part of our troubles with the Soviets has been due 
to language misinterpretations leading to dangerous misunderstandings, so were the Indian 
uprisings of 100 years ago caused by misinterpretations and lack of understanding because 
of the limited facility of the Chinook jargon or language that had to be used in negotiations 
with the Indians. The Chinook language was the only common medium for the exchange 
of ideas between various tribes of Indians and the American, English and French of the 
whites. 
	When Washington's first territorial governor, Isaac I. Stevens, attempted to control 
the activities of the Indians in western and eastern Washington, he failed to secure their 
compliance with his treaties largely because, as it soon became apparent, the Indians 
simply had not understood what their leaders had agreed they were to do, or why. 
Naturally, they resented being pushed around. 
	Soon after arriving at Olympia, Governor Stevens delegated Col. M. T. Simmons to 
represent him in Puget Sound Indian affairs largely because Simmons was one of the few 
American white leaders able to speak and understand the Chinook jargon sufficiently to get 
along well with a majority of the Indians. 
	No doubt during the treaty-making, both sides took advantage of the possibilities 
for misconceptions. Historical records make frequent references to wrong interpretations 
being blamed for acts of violence by both whites and Indians. But the fact remains that the 
Chinook language they were able to use as a common means of intercourse was the best in 
existence. 


Composite Jargon 

	Explaining the origins of the jargon, George C. Shaw, in his book The Chinook 
Jargon and How to Use It, published as late as 1909, states that, "The origin of this Jargon, 
a conventional language similar to the Lingua Franca of the Mediterranean, the Negro-
English- Dutch of the Surinam, the Pigeon English of China, dates back to the explorers 
and traders of the 18th century." 
	These were the Spanish, English and American mariners and French Canadian fur 
traders who came to the Pacific Northwest before the Lewis and Clark expedition's arrival 
in 1806. When Lewis and Clark arrived on the north bank at the Columbia River's mouth, 
they found that the Chinook Indians there already understood English and French words as 
well as the language of the Nootka tribes on Vancouver Island in what is now British 
Columbia.


p88

	For many generations before, the various tribes of the North Pacific region, 
especially along the coast, had practiced a common, though limited, manner of speech 
understandable between tribes. George Vancouver's men found the Indians in Grays 
Harbor able to understand Chinook and Nootka. 
	But with the arrival of the Astor party, the Chinook language became enlarged and 
more common in use among the Indian tribes and whites, and by the time the Hudson's 
Bay Company settled at Vancouver on the Columbia, French words were added to the 
American and English idioms commonly used by the Indians. 
	As movement started up the Columbia, on th