Told by the Pioneer's - Washington Secretary of State

Told
by the Pioneers
we were waiting our turn to cross, this is still fresh in my memory.
A drunken Indian came into our camp and seeing one of my brothers
sitting on a chair, holding the baby, dumped them out of the chair and
attempted to occupy the vacant seat, but his head came in contact with
an iron fire-shovel in the hands of my father that almost would upset
his dissipated career.
The river at this place was dangerous, being full of snags and driftwood,
which made it very difficult and dangerous to cross with those
poorly constructed flatboats. I saw two or three boats strike a snag'
and go bottom up, men and cattle struggling together in the swift current.
One fellow got on a snag, but the thing' kept flopping up and
down so that it was a hard thing to hang on to, but as it was the only
thing within his reach, except muddy water, he managed to stay by it
until his friends got a rope to him and he 'was soon landed safe on
shore. Before we got across another incident occurred that might
haw caused the death of a good many people. It seems the Indians
on the opposite side of the river were trying to communicate with
their friends on our side.
'Ve could see the people plainly passing back and forth by the campfire
on the opposite side of the river and the people on our side came
to a hasty conclusion that the Indians were killing and scalping all the
pilgrims on the other side. In order to deter the Indians from that
unpleasant amusement, the excited mob on our side commenced shooting
across the river. I don't suppose there was as much powder burned
in as short a time at the battle of Bull Run as there ,,'as on the banks
of the Missouri on that dark night. It was a terror. E"eryone who
had a shooting iron was doing his lewl best. It was a perilous undertaking
to attempt to cross the river after dark but a company of
twenty-five or thirty made the attempt, and our ~Ir. Cline was one of
the first to volunteer his services. They succeeded in getting across
but it ,vas quite a difficult task to get the men on our side to stop
shooting in order to g'ive the brave boys in the boat a chance to make a
landing. They soon discovered the mistake and returned. Na one
was hurt. Mr. Cline said afterwards that when he got across the river
that night he felt like cleaning out all the Indians on the plains. 'We
crossed the river on the fifth day of May. A gTeat many families that
knew of the difficultv that father had with the Indian on the Missouri
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side were afraid to travel with us unless organized in a large train for
better protection against the Indians, as an Indian never forgets ah
injury and they would try to get all our scalps. \Ve organized a company
of eighty wagons. J ames Allen was elected captain and the
train was named the Washington Union. .Mr. Allen died in Olympia
some years ago. We soon discovered that it was not very pleasant to
travel in such a large body and our family and Russels and two others
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