TOLD by the PIONEERS - Washington Secretary of State

Told by the Pioneers
for the family, and I gorew up there. In that log house, I listened to
wolves howling they sometimes caught the sheep and the cougar's
cry, which sounded like a lost child. These animals had to be trapped.
The elk whistled and baby bears seemed to bark.
Father and mother were Methodists. There was no church so father
and mother held Sunday school in our house. Father established
•
a post office and got a mail route and my brother carried the mail on
his back from Cape Flattery to Quillayute. I was a good shot and
practiced with the boys. Once I competed with father and beat him
at target shooting.
In Quillayute, people built rough board houses, chinked up with
moss and sometimes sealed with boards. Our house was 24 feet by •
24 feet. The settlers built their houses by cutting down the trees and
splitting the lumber with a frow, which is a long wedge-shaped tool
used in splitting boards and shingles.
'Ve rode horseback oyer the trails, or walked or rode in Indian canoes
on the ocean. Once 'when I was sick I was hauled out over the
trail on a sled forty miles across the mountains to Clallam.
•
For supplies, we sent an Indian canoe out to Cape Flattery once in
six months for provisions and mail, until my brother began carrying
the mail, then we had mail once a week.
Mother made our clothes out of flannel and gingham. In the summer
we wore sun bonnets. They were pretty and cute as well as useful.
Mother knew how to braid hats out of oat straw, knit our stockings
and spun her own yarn with a little flax wheel her own mother
had given her. We had fine stockings and mittens and nice clothes.
I liked those little Mother Hubbard dresses. Our stockings wore like
•
Iron.
I learned to talk the Chinook language.
Indian Story
At first the Indians were friendly. Mrs. Dan Cullen, my older sister,
lived near us. Her husband had the Indians pretty well under control.
My brother taught school and once punished an Indian boy.
On his way home that evening, the angry Indians surrounded him and
his young woman companion. He said to the Indians, "First let me
take her home, and then I will talk to you." When they reached his
home he armed himself, and with my sister, backed up against the
house and held them at bay. Meantime Dan Pullen was told, and he
aroused all the other white people. They came with their guns and
finally overawed the Indians.
38