Blazing the Way; Or, True Stories, Songs and Sketches of Puget SoundDenny, Emily Inez
History
Blazing the Way; Or, True Stories, Songs and Sketches of Puget Sound
Denny, Emily Inez
Indians of North America -- Northwestern States; Oregon Territory -- History; Washington (State) -- History
The following is a brief recapitulation of the first days on Puget
Sound; in these later years we see the rapid and skillful construction
of elegant mansions, charming cottages and stately business houses, all
in sight of the spot where stood the first little cabin of the pioneer.
The builders of this cabin were D. T. Denny, J. N. Low and Lee Terry,
assisted by the Indians, the only tools, an ax and a hammer, the place
Alki Point, the time, the fall of 1851.
They baked their bread before the fire on a willow board hewed from a
piece of a tree which grew near the camp; the only cooking vessel was a
tin pail; the salmon they got off the Indians was roasted before the
fire on a stick.
The cabin was unfinished when the famous landing was made, November
13th, 1851, because J. N. Low returned to Portland, having been on the
Sound but a few days, then Lee Terry boarded Collins' scow on its return
trip up Sound leaving D. T. Denny alone for about three weeks, during
most of which time he was ill. This was Low's cabin; after the landing
of Bell, Boren and A. A. Denny and the others of the party, among whom
were Low and C. C. Terry, a roof was put on the unfinished cabin and
they next built A. A. Denny's and then two cabins of split cedar for
Bell and Boren and their families.
When they moved to the east side of Elliott Bay, Bell's was the first
one built. W. N. Bell and D. T. Denny built A. A. Denny's on the east
side, as he was sick. D. T. Denny had served an apprenticeship in cabin
building, young as he was, nineteen years of age, before he came to
Puget Sound.
The first of D. T. Denny's cabins he built himself with the aid of three
Indians. There was not a stick or piece of sawed stuff in it.
However, by the August following his marriage, which took place January
23rd, 1853, he bought of H. L. Yesler lumber from his sawmill at about
$25.00 per M. to put up a little board house, sixteen by twenty feet
near the salt water, between Madison and Marion streets, Seattle.
This little home was my birthplace, the first child of the first white
family established at Elliott Bay. Mr. and Mrs. D. T. Denny had been
threatened by Indians and their cabin robbed, so thought it best to move
into the settlement.
CHAPTER IV
FOUNDING OF SEATTLE AND INDIAN WAR.
The most astonishing change wrought in the aspect of nature by the
building of a city on Puget Sound is not the city itself but the
destruction of the primeval forest.
By the removal of the thick timber the country becomes unrecognizable;
replaced by thousands of buildings of brick, wood and stone, graded
streets, telephone and electric light systems, steam, electric and cable
railways and all the paraphernalia of modern civilization, the contrast
is very great. The same amount of energy and money expended in a
treeless, level country would probably have built a city three times as
large as Seattle.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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