Reminiscences of a Pioneer | Page 6

about all of the able-bodied men within reach.
The savages were encountered on the Molalley and after a sharp fight
were dispersed or killed. Several were left dead on the ground. The
whites had one man wounded. Thus the war power of the Molalleys
was destroyed forever.
In this connection I wish to make a digression, which I trust my readers
will pardon. It has often been urged that the white man has shown little
gratitude and no pity for the aborigines of this country. This I wish to
refute. The Indian that brought the word of warning to the white settlers
was ever after the object of tender solicitude on the part of those whom
he had befriended. I have seen that Indian, then old and possibly worse
off for his association with civilization, sitting down and bossing a
gang of Chinamen cutting and splitting wood for Dan'l Waldo. The
Indian, "Quinaby," always contracted the sawing of the wood at $2.00
per cord and hired the Chinamen to do the work for 50 cents per cord.
He had a monopoly on the wood-sawing business for Mr. Waldo,
Wesley Shannon, and other old pioneers. It mattered not to "Quinaby"

that prices went down, his contract price remained the same, and the
old pioneers heartily enjoyed the joke, and delighted in telling it on
themselves.
But enough of this. Spring came at last and a new world burst upon the
vision of the heretofore almost beleaguered pioneers. We had wintered
on a "claim" belonging to a young man named John McKinney, two
miles from the present town of Jefferson. He had offered his cabin as a
shelter with true Western hospitality, including the free use of land to
plant a crop. Accordingly about twenty acres were plowed and sown to
wheat. This work was performed by my elder brothers. Meantime my
father had started out to look for a claim. Nine miles north of Eugene
City he purchased a "claim" of 320 acres, paying therefor an Indian
pony and $40 in cash. To this place we moved early in May, and there
began the task of building up a home in the western wilds. A small
cabin of unhewn logs constituted the only improvement on the "claim,"
but a new house of hewn logs was soon erected and a forty-acre field
inclosed with split rails. We had plenty of neighbors who, like
ourselves, were improving their lands, and mutual assistance was the
rule.
As summer approached it became necessary to return to our wintering
place, where a crop had been sown, and harvest the same. Accordingly,
my father, accompanied by my two older brothers, the late Judge J. M.
Thompson of Lane County, and Senator S. C. Thompson, Jr., of Wasco,
then boys of 12 and 14 years, went back and cared for the grain. The
wheat was cut with a cradle, bound into bundles and stacked. A piece
of ground was then cleared, the grain laid down on the "tramping floor"
and oxen driven around until the grain was all tramped out. After the
grain was all "threshed out," it was carried on top of a platform built of
rails and poured out on a wagon sheet, trusting to the wind to separate
the wheat kernels from the straw and chaff. By this primitive method
the crop was harvested, threshed, cleaned, and then sacked. It was then
hauled by ox teams to Albany where a small burr mill had been erected
by a man named Monteith, if my memory serves me correctly, and then
ground to flour.
And then, joy of joys! We had wheat bread. No more boiled wheat, nor
flour ground in a coffee mill,--but genuine wheat bread. You, reader,
who probably never ate a meal in your life without bread, have little

conception of the deliciousness of a biscuit after the lapse of a year. As
Captain Applegate once said to the writer, referring to the first wheat
bread he ever remembered eating: "No delicacy,--no morsel of food
ever eaten in after life tasted half so delicious as that bread." It must be
remembered that Captain Applegate crossed the plains in 1843 and was
therefore an "old settler" when we arrived. His trials were prolonged
only a matter of eight years; but looking back, what an eternity was
emcompassed in those eight years.
One of the leading characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon is that on coming
to the western hemisphere he brought with him his wife and children,--
his school books, and his Bible. As soon, therefore, as a spot for a
home had been selected and a rude shelter of logs erected for loved
ones, the neighbors began discussing the question of school. It was
finally arranged that we must have a school, and the cabin of a bachelor