The Busy Life of Eighty-Five Years of Ezra Meeker Ventures and adventures; sixty-three years of pioneer life in the old Oregon country; an account of the author's trip across the plains with an ox team; return trip, 1906-7; his cruise on Puget Sound, 1853; trip through the Natchess pass, 1854; over the Chilcoot pass; flat-boating on the Yukon, 1898. The Oregon trail.

The immigration of 1853 through the Natchess Pass settled in the Puyallup Valley. Although they had been on the Plains all summer and needed rest, imperative necessity compelled...

I was well up river, on the left bank of the Cowlitz. I could not tell how far, for there were no milestones, or way places to break the monotony of the crooked, half obstructed...

I was born near Huntsville, Butler County, Ohio, about ten miles east of Hamilton, Ohio. This, to me, important event occurred on December 29, A. D. 1830, hence I am many years...

The preceding chapter, "The End", was written more than eight years ago. Readers will have noted the work of monumenting the Oregon Trail was left unfinished, that only a beginn...

As soon as a part of our outfits were landed on the right bank of the river our trouble with the Indians began, not in open hostilities, but in robbery under the guise of beggar...

Upon my arrival in Indianapolis, people began to ask me about the Trail, and to say they had never heard that the Oregon Trail ran through that city, to which I replied I never...

We have seen with what travail the first immigrants passed through the Natchess Pass. We will now tell about that other struggle to construct any kind of a road at all, and so w...

This was then, and is yet, considered a great event in the history of the Northwest country, not because of completing railroad connection between the two towns, but because of...

"The Dalles, Oregon, Camp No. 16, March 10.—Arrived last night all in a muss, with load out of the wagon, but the mate had his men put the bed on, and a number of the willing bo...

I will not delay you long with a story relating the beginning of the conquest of the Oregon country through American valor. The first period, that of the exploration, can be tol...

When we stepped foot upon the right bank of the Missouri River we were outside the pale of civil law. We were within the Indian country where no organized civil government exist...

Put yourself in my place, reader, for a time—long enough to read this chapter. Think of yourself as young again, if elderly (I will not say old); play you have been old and now...

On the 21st day of March, 1858, the schooner Wild Pidgeon arrived at Steilacoom and brought the news that the Indians had discovered gold on Fraser River; had traded several pou...

While the breaking of the barrier of the great mountain range for the immigrants to Puget Sound through the Natchess Pass was not in a baptism of blood, certainly it was under t...

"Camp No. 87, July 3, 1906.—Odometer 1,065, Independence Rock. We drove over to the 'Rock,' from the 'Devil's Gate,' a distance of six miles, and camped at 10:00 o'clock for the...

From Cokeville to Pacific Springs, just west of the summit, of the Rocky Mountains at South Pass, by the road and trail we traveled, is 158 miles. Ninety miles of this stretch i...

The fact that the generation that participated in the Indian war in this State (then Territory) will soon pass, an attempt was made to hold a reunion of all the adults who were...

"Keep to the right, as the law directs," is an old western adage that governs travelers on the road, but we kept to the right because we wanted to follow the shore as we thought...

The latter part of August, 1854, James K. Hurd, of Olympia, sent me word that he had been out on the immigrant trail and heard that some of my relations on the road were belated...

It almost goes without saying, that before the final break up of the camp and separation of the parties there must be some sort of celebration of the event, a sort of house warm...

This account of pioneer life in the Puyallup would be incomplete without looking closer into their manner of living. The cabins were built under stress for immediate shelter, an...

What a charm the words our first cabin have to the pioneer. To many, it was the first home ever owned by them, while to many others, like myself, the first we ever had. We had b...

By the time the tide had turned, night had come and we were in a quandary as to what to do; whether to camp in our boat, or to start out on unknown waters in the dark. Our India...

About nine o'clock at night, with a bright moon shining, on October 1st, 1852, I carried my wife in my arms up the steep bank of the Willamette River, and three blocks away in t...

On a September day of 1852 an assemblage of persons could be seen encamped on the banks of the great Columbia, at The Dalles, now a city of no small pretensions, but then only a...

What I am now about to write may provoke a smile, but I can only say, reader, put yourself in my place. That there should be a feeling akin to affection between a man and an ox...

I left Washington on the 8th of January, 1908, and shipped the outfit over the Alleghany Mountains to McKeesport, Pennsylvania, having been in Washington, as the reader will not...

Camp No. 1 was in my front dooryard at Puyallup, Washington, a town established on my own homestead nearly forty years ago, on the line of the Northern Pacific Railroad, nine mi...

People now traversing what is popularly known as Nisqually Plains, that is, the stretch of open prairie, interspersed with clumps of timber, sparkling lakes, and glade lands, fr...

The start for the high table desert lands bordering the Yakima Valley cut me loose from all communication, for no more immigrants were met until I reached the main traveled rout...

What with the sweat incident to the day's travel, the chill air of an October night in the mountains, with but half a three-point blanket as covering and the ground for a mattre...

Wild animals in early days were very much more plentiful than now, particularly deer and black bear. The black bear troubled us a good deal and would come near the houses and ki...

I come now to a period of my life, as one might say, on the border land between pioneer days of the old Oregon country and of the later development of the younger territory and...

Allen's party left Steilacoom for this work July 30th, (1853), and was still at work on the 26th of September, when he wrote: "We will be through this week, having completed the...

It is strange how the mind will vividly retain the memory of some incidents of no particular importance, while the recollection of other passing events so completely fades away....

As we drew off on the tide from the mouth of the Puyallup River, numerous parties of Indians were in sight, some trolling for salmon, with a lone Indian in the bow of his canoe,...

"Camp No. 99, July 16, Fort Laramie, odometer 1,247.—From the time we crossed the Missouri in May, 1852, until we arrived opposite this place on the north bank of the Platte, no...

I am going to tell you the story of a public market of Cincinnati, Ohio, nearly a hundred years ago, or more accurately speaking of incidents in which the farmer dispensed with...

"Old Oregon Trail Monument Expedition, Brady Island, Nebraska, August 9, 1906, Camp No. 120, odometer, 1,536⅝.—Yesterday morning Twist ate his grain as usual and showed no signs...

Soon after the Indian war we moved to our donation claim. We had but three neighbors, the nearest nearly two miles away, and two of them kept bachelor's hall and were of no acco...

This camp did not prove so dreary as the last one, though more exposed to the swell of the big waters to the north, and sweep of the wind. To the north we had a view of thirty m...

If we were to confine the word religion to its strict construction as to meaning, we would cut off the pioneer actions under this heading to a great extent; but, if we will thin...

In the early '50's, out four and a half and seven miles, respectively, from Indianapolis, Indiana, there lived two young people with their parents, who were old-time farmers of...

Before giving an account of the adventure incident to marking the Oregon Trail given in detail in chapters to follow in this volume, I will write of one more adventure following...

"From the intelligence I gained from the Naudowessie Indians, among whom I arrived on the 7th of December (1776), and whose language I perfectly acquired during a residence of f...

Now that the trip has been made, and an account of stock, so to speak, taken, I have become surprised the work was undertaken. Not that I regret the act any more than I regret t...

One of these, the Mexican war of 1846, was clearly a war of conquest, brought on by the discordant element of the slave power, then so dominant and I may say domineering in our...

I had lived in the old Oregon country forty-four years and had never seen a mine. Mining had no attraction for me, any more than corner lots in new, embryo cities. I did not und...

I have been asked hundreds of times how many wagons were in the train I traveled with, and what train it was, and who was the captain?—assuming that, of course, we must have bee...

According to the best information obtainable, I was born in a log cabin, where the fireplace was nearly as wide as the cabin. The two doors on opposite sides admitted the horse,...

PAGE The Old Ancestral Homestead, 1676 1 Mt. Tacoma 86 We Struck Rapid but Awkward Strokes 118 Mt. Rainier 139 Type of Blockhouse 185 Old Settlers Meeting 195 Group of Hop House...

Erecting a monument in Vale, as related in the last chapter, finished the work in Oregon, as we soon crossed Snake River just below the mouth of Boise, and were landed on the hi...

At that beautiful city of Kearney we were accorded a fine camping place in the center of the town under the spreading boughs of the shade trees that line the streets, and a nice...

The ox is passing; in fact, has passed. Like the old-time spinning-wheel and the hand loom, that are only to be seen as mementos of the past, or the quaint old cobbler's bench w...

My connection with the banking business in Puyallup was neither a venture nor an adventure, in the common acceptance of the meaning of these words, and to this day I can scarcel...

"It looks for all the world like a great big white flatiron," answered Eliza, the sister, "doesn't it, Mrs. Meeker?" But, leaving the women folks to their similes, we drivers tu...

extraordinary achievements, but when the object is attained and the danger is past, then the power is measurably lost, as in this case, when the good woman came to know they wer...

On the night of the 27th of November, 1866, a party of four young men, Ransom Bonney, Jacob Woolery, Edward Ross, and Marion Meeker, none of whom were nineteen years old, togeth...

In the early fifties of the 19th century, there appeared on the waters of Puget Sound an eccentric character answering to the name of Joe Lane McDonald. He was a corpulent man o...

Just why the prairie schooner wagon body was built boat shape I have never been able to tell or see anybody else that could. That shape came in very handy when we crossed the pl...

It makes no difference how far you travel in "Pathfinder the Great"—to the next county or across the continent—for its Pullman-like riding qualities do not leave you dog-tired a...

The buffalo trails generally followed the water courses or paralleled them, while again they would lead across the country with scarcely any deviation from a direct course. When...

"October 28th, 1855, nine persons were massacred on White River, about twenty miles South of Seattle." Such is the record of that bloody day's work, eighteen miles distant from...

A more proper heading, I think, would be "Sugar Beet Raising," but everybody at the time spoke of it the other way, and so it shall be. I did raise hundreds of tons of sugar bee...

Congressional delegation had introduced me to the President in the cabinet room. Mr. Roosevelt showed a lively interest in the work from the start. He did not need to be told th...

(1) Exploration, by Robert Gray, Lewis and Clark and Jonathan Carver—Naming Oregon. (2) Exploitation, by John Jacob Astor, the Hunt Party, Hudson Bay Co.—Ashley, Bonneyville and...

The Carson Family—The Walker Family—"Good Templars Lodge"—Holiday Celebrations—First Postoffice—Mount Rainier Glacier—Colony of 1853—Indian Massacre and Flight of the Settlers—D...

Fortieth Anniversary Celebration of the Completion of N. P. R. R.—Extravagance and Waste at the Celebration—Supply and Demand Regulates Prices—Consumer Too Far Removed from Prod...

Good Road Movement—The Overland Outfit in the Interim—Yukon Exposition—The Trip of 1910-'11—Hunting for the Trail—Dedication of the Wagon and Team to Washington—A Bill for Surve...

Witness of Five Wars—Results, Advancement of Civilization—Wars Cannot be Averted—Preparedness Gives Advantage—It Does Not Cause War—The Monroe Doctrine and the "Open Door To Chi...

Quotations from Journal—Shoeing the Oxen—Out from The Dalles—Pendleton, Oregon—The Blue Mountains—Meacham, Oregon—La Grande, Oregon—Ladd's Canyon—Camp No. 34—Baker City, Oregon—...

Cincinnati Market a Hundred Years Ago; No Middlemen—All Markets Now, All Middlemen—Transportation, a Factor in the Cost of Living—Causes, "High Living," Abandonment of Simple Li...