Chapter XI: Introduction: By Reuben G. Thwaites (9)

Santa Fé had so long been the hotbed of revolt that its inhabitants must have been lonely for several years without one to engage their attention. The rebellion of 1837 was due to political intrigue for which a former Governor, Manuel Armijo, was held to be largely responsible. The Pueblo Indians participated as usual, and the Governor, Albino Perez, as well as the chief justice and nearly a dozen others, were wantonly murdered. Santa Fé once more fell into the hands of the enemy, who elected José Gonzalez, a Taos Indian, as Governor. Armijo now deserted the rebel cause, and, raising a sufficient force to overcome the Gonzalez faction, declared himself the administrative head. The revolt was quelled in January, 1838, Gonzalez and several of his adherents paying the death penalty, while Armijo's "loyalty" was rewarded by a confirmation of his self imposed governorship, which he retained for eight years.

Meanwhile the Texas troubles had been brewing, and discontent prevailed in that quarter over boundary disputes, and because the large Santa Fé trade came and went by the northern route. In 1841, President Lamar equipped a force, known as the Texan Santa Fé Expedition, consisting of three hundred rangers under General McLeod, for the main purpose of taking New Mexican affairs into their own hands; but before reaching the capital the entire "army" was captured by Armijo's militia, their belongings confiscated, and the command marched to Mexico, where they were released in June, 1842.

The Mexican War and American occupancy followed closely on these exciting episodes. Save during the brief periods of the arrival and departure of the caravans at Santa Fé, with the resultant hubbub and flow of gold, the capital was more dead than alive. The people, for the greater part, were densely ignorant; in 1832 there were only half a dozen schools in the whole territory, and although the salaries of the Santa Fé teachers aggregated only $500 in that year, even this sum, from lack of funds, was unavailable in 1834 and the schools were closed. By 1844 the only schools were "of the lowest primary class," and a keen observer asserted that three fourths of the people were illiterates. Santa Fé was without a newspaper, although a sheet called _El Crepúsculo_ ("The Dawn") was printed at Taos for four weeks in 1835 on the only press then in the territory of seventy thousand inhabitants. Possibly the press later found its way to Santa Fé to become the principal part of the equipment of a "government printing office" which existed in one end of the Palace in 1846, and from which Kearny published his "Code," the first Spanish-English production of the territory.

In its appearance Santa Fé had changed but little since 1807, when Pike described its aggregation of low adobe houses as resembling from a distance a fleet of flat-bottomed Ohio river-boats. The Palace occupied then, as it did early in the seventeenth century and does to-day, the northern side of the plaza. Besides being the only building in New Mexico that could boast the luxury of glass windows, it contained the governmental offices as of yore, as well as quarters for the guard and the government printing office. In Pike's time the opposite side of the plaza was occupied by the houses of the clergy and the public officers, in addition to the military chapel, but with the advent of trade these gave way, before 1846, to the shops of merchants and traders.

General Stephen W. Kearny left Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in June, 1846, with his "Army of the West," comprising about eighteen hundred men (mostly volunteers), equipped with a supply train of a thousand mules, and overtaking _en route_ the Santa Fé caravan of four hundred wagons. A small force was sent forward to open the way, and although it was favorably received, Kearny later learned that his advance toward the capital would be contested. Nevertheless, the army continued its march and entered the town on August 18th without the slightest opposition on the part of Armijo, who had fled precipitately. The Stars and Stripes were hoisted over the Palace, which Kearny made his headquarters, and the now seasoned volunteers encamped on an eminence overlooking the town. On the following day the inhabitants were assembled in the plaza, where the oath of allegiance was administered to the former Mexican officials, including the acting Governor, Juan B. Vigil. On the 22d Kearny issued his famous proclamation declaring himself Governor and the inhabitants of New Mexico citizens of the United States.

Meanwhile, Captain W.H. Emory selected, as the site for a fort, an eminence on the northern edge of the town, and the construction of defensive works was immediately begun. The fort, named in honor of William L. Marcy, then Secretary of War, was built principally of adobe; the only approachable point was guarded by a blockhouse of pine logs, and the magazine was erected of the same material. The embankments of old Fort Marcy are still plainly traceable, but there is nothing to mark the graves of the two hundred brave Missouri volunteers who were laid to rest at the foot of the slope during the cruel winter of 1846-47.

Kearny took almost immediate steps to provide civil government for New Mexico by appointing as Governor Charles Bent, who had for many years been a prominent trader in the country. But as the months passed many of the New Mexicans grew tired of their new allegiance, and conditions ripened for another revolt. On January 19, 1847, Bent, with other officials, was foully murdered at Fernandez de Taos by Mexicans and Taos Indians, but retribution swift and terrible followed, and the battle-scarred and ruined church at Taos pueblo practically repeated the story of the Alamo.

Although it remained under military control until 1850, New Mexico very soon began to feel the effects of American influence. In 1847 a legislative assembly was held at Santa Fé; the first English newspaper, _The Santa Fé Republican_, was founded, and the New Mexicans had their first opportunity of becoming familiar with the mysteries of a sawmill, which was placed in operation on Santa Fé Creek. In August, 1848, the treaty of peace was proclaimed from the Palace, and the ancient city formally changed masters for the fifth time in its history. The volunteers were glad to return to their homes, the Santa Fé trade resumed its busy march, and modern ways made further impress on the manners of the old adobe town. In 1848 the first English school was put in operation at the capital; later in the year the _New Mexican_ was founded, and, save for a few intermissions, has ever since been published; while the ecclesiastical importance of the town was augmented by the establishment of the Roman Catholic vicariate-apostolic of Santa Fé, with Bishop Lamy at its head. On March 3, 1851, after much wrangling and many attempts, New Mexico was organized into a full-fledged territory of the United States, James S. Calhoun becoming its first civil governor, and on July 14th the first legislative assembly fixed Santa Fé as the seat of the new government.

Next came the Civil War, the principal operations of which were not so far away that Santa Fé failed to participate. The severe defeat of the Federals under Canby by the Texans under Sibley, at Valverde, in February, 1862 (where Kit Carson's bravery made him a brigadier), opened the northern way to the Confederates. Santa Fé was abandoned by the Union forces on March 3d, and Sibley took possession a week later. On the 22d Colonel Slough's Federal force of thirteen hundred men marched from Fort Union toward the town. On the 26th the vanguard of four hundred met the enemy in Apache Cañon, and in the severe engagements which followed on that day and on the 28th, the Federals were victorious and the way was again opened to their occupancy of Santa Fé on April 11th, the Confederates having evacuated three days earlier. This practically closed the war in New Mexico, the Texans returning to their homes minus half their number.

The recent years of Santa Fé's history have more than ever marked the passage of the ancient town from the lethargy characteristic of the century of its founding to the enterprise which one expects in an American settlement of the present day. The contrast between the sleepy Mexican village in the wilderness during the early years of American occupancy and the progressive, substantial, picturesque town of nowadays is vast. The great awakening came with the first screech of the locomotive on February 9, 1880, which forever hushed the rumble of the long caravan as it rolled its weary way into the crooked streets of the City of the Holy Faith. New Mexico's capital was enabled at last to make the acquaintance of the outer world, although rival settlements, created by the new trail of steel, robbed it more and more, as year after year passed, of the trade which had helped to make it famous. Its genial climate and other advantages attracted many from the East; schools and hospitals were established, and as the seat of federal and territorial administration, as well as of military and ecclesiastical importance, its social advantages became widely recognized.

Despite its modern buildings devoted to various uses, there are parts of the town which have not changed greatly during the half-century of American influence. The plaza, of tragic memory, has evolved from a barren common to a bower of beauty ornamented with a monument dedicated to the heroes of Indian and civil strife. The old Palace, in which the gallant Vargas was dungeoned, and in which Lew Wallace wrote the last chapters of _Ben Hur_, has been refurbished, but probably no walls within our domain hold in hiding such a wealth of cruelty and horror, of treachery and suffering, of valor and chivalry, as the great adobe structure which still overlooks the historic plaza of our oldest western town.

SALT LAKE CITY

THE DESERT THAT HAS BLOSSOMED AS THE ROSE

BY JAMES EDWARD TALMAGE

Long before the first settlement, little more than fifty years ago, of the valley of the Great Salt Lake, strange stories of the briny sea and its desert setting had found their way to the civilized and cultured East; and, mingled with the weird accounts of sun-baked plains, waterless wilderness, and saline solitudes, were the predictions of the wise that the country would never be worth settling. This region was included within the area against which Daniel Webster hurled his anathema of denunciation from the floor of the national Senate, proclaiming the utter worthlessness of the great West, and declaring that he would "never vote one cent from the public treasury to place the Pacific coast one inch nearer to Boston" than it then was. And concerning the Salt Lake Valley itself, Colonel James Bridger, for whom the disputed honor of discovering the Great Salt Lake has been claimed, said that he would offer a thousand dollars in gold for the first ear of corn that could be ripened therein.

The motive spirit actuating the early travellers in these then Mexican wastes was that of exploration and discovery. Worthy as it was, it was insufficient to induce the settlement of the wilderness or to inspire the ambition of subduing the desert and sanctifying the waste places with the name of home. The most potent of all incentives, that of religious conviction and conscientious devotion to what was regarded as sacred duty, was necessary--and not wanting.

It was on the 19th of July, 1847, that the vanguard of the pioneer party of "Mormon" colonists sighted the valley of the Great Salt Lake. For long, weary months they had journeyed; their start from the frontiers of civilization had been hastened by the musket and the sword and the devouring flame of persecution; their course over plain and mountain had been attended by vicissitudes that only those who have toiled through such journeys can comprehend.

And what emotions did that first view of the "Promised Land" inspire! A valley, beautiful it is true, even as the desert is beautiful in its parching splendor; as the mountains are beautiful in their terrible grandeur; as the ocean is beautiful in its calm monotony or in its storm-lashed fury; but such beauty is not suggestive of rest or peace, and it was peace the wanderers sought. From the cañons of the Wasatch, though not the first to traverse the region, yet the first to brave its desolate and forbidding seclusion in search of a home, they looked down on a valley walled by the Wasatch and the Oquirrhs, bare of tree or shrub, except for patches of chaparral oak, and here and there a gnarled willow or cottonwood bravely struggling for existence on the upper parts of the few stream courses that opened from the mountain wall on the east; the only blossoms those of the stunted sunflower and its desert companions, the foliage that of the gray artemisia, or wild sage.

On the 24th of July, 1847, Brigham Young, the founder of Salt Lake City and the pioneer colonizer of Utah, descended from the mountain gateway, followed by the main division of the company, numbering a hundred and forty and four souls, of whom three were women. One of this trio of heroines was overcome by the treeless and desolate aspect of the valley. "Weak and weary as I am," she said, "I would rather go a thousand miles farther than stop in this forsaken place." Three days earlier an advance detachment, including Orson Pratt and Erastus Snow, each of whom came to be known as a prominent apostle of the "Mormon" Church, had entered the valley; but July 24th is regarded as the first day of occupation, and each recurrence of the date is observed as Pioneer Day, a holiday by law established in the State of Utah.

The pioneers' purpose was not uncertain; having reached their destination they paused not to make experiments or preliminary tests. "This is the place," said their leader, "the very place"; and the company began at once the work of permanently establishing themselves and of preparing for the reception of other immigrant parties then on the march. Ploughs were promptly brought into action, and the soil theretofore unused to the husbandman's touch was in part torn and turned; yet so hard and resistant was it that it measured its strength with the energy of man and for the time held the victory. But the colonists were full of resource. The little stream now known as City Creek, the chief source of the city's water supply, was diverted from its course and made to flood the land chosen for the first desert garden. With its long thirst appeased, its stony heart softened, the virgin soil yielded and received the first seed sown by human agency in the Great American Desert. Thus began the system of irrigation which in its later developments has proved itself the magic wand under whose sway the desert has been conquered and the wilderness transformed into a garden of beauty.

On the 28th of the same month the city was planned and its boundaries were indicated; five days later the survey of the city plat was begun under the direction of Orson Pratt. All the plans were on a scale of unlimited liberality. The streets, each eight rods in width, were made to cross at right angles, dividing the city into rectangular blocks, each of ten acres. The choicest block in point of situation was designated as the site of the prospective temple; and is now occupied by the world-famed Temple, the Tabernacle, and the less pretentious Assembly Hall. The original survey was made to include a hundred and thirty-five of these ten-acre blocks; several were chosen for public squares and parks; the remainder were to be divided into city lots for the accommodation of the thousands soon to come.

Religious devotion, the inspiring cause of this seemingly reckless scheme of colonization, demanded facilities for public worship; and, lacking chapel, synagogue, or temple, the colonists provided a leafy tabernacle. Trees were hauled from the mountains, and of these a bowery was constructed, which for a time was church, court-house, and capitol.

Having learned by experience that Indian attacks were to be expected, the settlers congregated on a single ten-acre block, which they enclosed by erecting their huts of logs and adobe along the eastern border. Each hut opened inward toward the centre of the square and was provided with a loophole on the outer side; the space between the houses and the sides of the block not occupied by habitations was protected by a continuous wall of adobe. With the increase of population additions were made to the fort; but as soon as the ruddy aborigines learned that the white invaders were their friends, the fort was abandoned, and the settlers distributed themselves over the city area.

At the time of its first settlement Utah was a part of the Mexican domain; nevertheless, the "Mormon" colonists, confident as to the destiny of their nation, patriotically raised the Stars and Stripes and took possession of the region in the name of the United States. A prominent hill, part of the Wasatch spur which bounds the present city on the northeast like a fortress wall, was chosen as the flag site; and this elevation is to-day known as Ensign Peak. From its summit, now surmounted by an enduring flag-staff of steel, the banner of freedom is thrown to the mountain breezes on public holidays and other occasions of patriotic celebration.

More colonists arrived in parties great and small; and by the spring of 1848 approximately seventeen hundred souls were encamped in the valley, more than four hundred dwellings had been erected within the confines of the old fort, and about five thousand acres of land had been brought under cultivation. In May and June, the settlers were arrayed in battle order, not against human foes but to fight the dreaded insect scourge, the Rocky Mountain crickets, which in countless hordes descended from the mountains and invaded the fields and gardens. Every member of the little community, man, woman, or child, was called into action but to little purpose. When the people had been reduced to despair they were saved by what they devoutly believed to be a special and miraculous interposition of Providence. There suddenly appeared on the western horizon a tremulous cloud which grew in magnitude as it rapidly approached, until at last it was seen to be the vanguard of an advancing army of gulls. Down swooped the white-winged deliverers, devouring the crickets with incredible voracity until but few were left alive. Since that day the gulls have been sacred in Utah. Every spring they come to follow the plough as it turns the soil for the season's seed, and so confident are they of their safety that they may be approached almost within arm's length. Added to the ruin wrought by the crickets was a further deprivation, due to drought and frosts. The harvest of 1848 was little better than a failure, and the succeeding winter and spring were seasons of extreme destitution. The people were brought to the dire necessity of gathering the wild weeds of the desert and even of boiling the raw hides in their camps for sustenance. The bulbous roots of the sego lily--now the banner-flower of the State--were dug for food; but the pangs of hunger were an experience from which none escaped. However, the following season brought a more abundant return from the soil and the prospects of the colony brightened.

In February, 1848, the treaty of Guadaloupe Hidalgo secured by cession from Mexico to the United States the region now embraced by Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, and California. The great republic reached the Pacific, and Salt Lake City became an integral part of the United States. Up to this time, and, indeed, for a year thereafter, the governmental affairs of the new community were administered almost wholly by the Church authorities. In February, 1849, the city was divided into nineteen ecclesiastical wards, over each of which a "bishopric" presided, consisting of a bishop and his two counsellors, who combined with their purely churchly function the duties of magistrates and civil officers. They regulated the levying and disbursing of taxes, the construction of roads and bridges, and the like.[16]

In the early months of 1849 steps were taken toward the establishment of a State government from which the city might hope to derive corporate powers. It was proposed that the State of which Salt Lake City was destined to be the capital be called Deseret--a name occurring in the records of the ancient inhabitants of the continent, as set forth in the Book of Mormon, and meaning "the honey bee." The hive, expressive of the characteristic industry and thrift of the people, was chosen as the symbol and seal of the prospective State. Pending action by the national Congress, the "Provisional Government of the State of Deseret" was established, and its officers were duly elected. The General Assembly of the State of Deseret, in January, 1851, chartered "Great Salt Lake City" and appointed its first Mayor, Jedediah M. Grant, and other municipal officers. The people were not yet informed that four months before, September 9, 1850, the Congress of the United States had refused their petition for statehood and had created the Territory of Utah. The acts of the provisional government were subsequently confirmed by the first territorial Legislature, and the city's charter was thus legalized.

Each passing year added to the attractiveness of the new capital. An orchard had been planted on every unoccupied lot, shade trees were placed along the outer borders of the sidewalks, and to nourish these a small stream was made to flow down either side of every street. The city became the acknowledged business centre of the inter-mountain region. Situated on the road to the gold regions, when the gold fever was at its height, travel was heavy, and the settlers found a ready market for anything they could produce from the soil. Gold-seekers hastening westward and successful miners returning eastward halted at this oasis to replenish their supplies, and left their wealth in lavish abundance to enrich the people of the desert, who, however, had little need of gold in their local trade, and valued it only for the implements of husbandry and building it would buy in the East. A strange spectacle was presented of a city destitute of many necessaries and of most of the luxuries of life, yet rich to affluence in gold, which was sent back to "the States" by the bucketful.

Merchandise was brought in by fleets of "prairie schooners," and the contents of each of these wheeled boats of mountain and plain were eagerly bought up. There was danger of class distinctions arising, of the few who had most gold to spare buying more than their share, and so becoming rich at the expense of their fellows. Acting on the counsel of their President, the people adopted rules to secure an equable distribution of imported goods. Later the settlers established their merchandise business on a plan of co-operation, and Zion's Co-operative Mercantile Institution began its phenomenally successful career. The chief establishment of this system is still operating, with headquarters in Salt Lake City, and its annual sales, officially attested, average over four million dollars.

The city's very existence was threatened in 1857. A detachment of the United States army numbering over two thousand men was ordered to Utah by President Buchanan for the purpose of suppressing an alleged insurrection, which, it was reported, had culminated in the destruction of the court records and the driving of the federal judge, Drummond, from his bench. When news of the libellous charges against the people reached Utah, the clerk of Judge Drummond's own court issued a full denial under official seal. But the mischievous misrepresentation had already produced its effect at the nation's capital, and the army was on the march.

Mail contractors operating between the Missouri River and Salt Lake City brought word of the approaching soldiery, and reported threats of both officers and men as to the summary way in which they would dispose of the people when once they found themselves within the "City of the Saints." The Latter-day Saints understood the intensity of the public sentiment against them; they felt, too, the injustice of the libel. They believed that the army's invasion of their city and Territory meant their massacre. Brigham Young was still Governor of Utah, and the territorial militia was subject to his command. He promptly proclaimed martial law throughout the Territory, and forbade any armed forces to enter its confines. Echo Cañon, the easiest avenue of approach, was fortified. In its defiles an army might well be stopped by a few. The people had been roused to desperation. Force was to be met with force.

The army wintered at Fort Bridger, Wyoming, amid severe vicissitudes. In the meantime a full report of the situation had been made by Governor Young to the President of the United States. President Buchanan tacitly admitted his rashness, but to recall the troops at that juncture would be to openly confess the blunder. A peace commissioner, in the person of Colonel Thomas B. Kane, was dispatched to Salt Lake City, and finally the President's appointees were conducted through the "Mormon" lines by "Mormon" militia, and were duly inducted into office. Then it was demonstrated that the court records were intact, and the people at peace. The army followed later, under pledge that its ranks be not broken within the city limits and that its camp be not within forty miles of the capital. And when at last the soldiers threaded the streets, a strange sight met their view. Salt Lake City was deserted, except for a few men who stood with lighted torches in hand ready to fire the heaps of combustibles that had been piled in every house. For the people, loth to trust too implicitly in the unwilling promises of officers smarting under the consciousness of defeat, had abandoned their homes, with the solemn determination that if the invaders made a single attempt at plunder they should find naught but ashes for their loot.

But the promises were kept in good faith. The army established its headquarters at Camp Floyd, forty miles southwest from the city. There the soldiers remained until summoned back, at the outbreak of the Civil War. During their two years' encampment in Utah, the soldiers were fed by the people. Everything in the nature of food was eagerly bought up at an unusual price, and thus the nation's gold found its way into the hands of the citizens. Then, so great was the hurry of the army's departure, so urgent the need of speedy travel, that all their belongings outside of actual necessities were sold for a trifle or given away. The reason why the people regard the coming of "Buchanan's army" as a blessing to their city is evident.

In 1861 the Overland Telegraph Line, which had been approaching the city from both east and west, was completed, and Salt Lake City was relieved of some of the disadvantages of its desert isolation. Eight years later the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific railways reached Utah, and from that time to the present the development of both city and State has been of phenomenal rapidity.

From the earliest period of its existence Salt Lake City has been strong and untiring in its efforts to secure adequate educational facilities. In October, 1847, only three months after the pioneer entry, a school was opened within the walls of the Old Fort. The schoolhouse was a tent, and for seats and desks hewn slabs and sections of logs were brought into service. Other schools followed and the people thus early voiced their desire for secondary and higher instruction. In February, 1850, when the city was less than three years old, "The University of the State of Deseret" with its seat at "Great Salt Lake City" was incorporated by the legislative assembly of the provisional government. In November of that year the "University" began its work in the field of secondary instruction under the name of "The Parent School." As suggested by this title branch schools were conducted in the smaller settlements. The institution thus grandly projected in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles has grown with the commonwealth, and to-day, under the name of the University of Utah, compares favorably with other State colleges of the West. The present public-school system is the pride of the city. Stately school buildings, modern and efficient, and the best equipment procurable are provided; and the schools are free.

And so the city has grown, gathering strength with its years, but in surprising proportion. It has ever been quick to adopt the conveniences of advancing civilization; for there was little of the old to sweep away. Its street-cars are driven by the power of the mountain cataract thirty-five miles away. Its streets, public buildings, and dwellings are lighted by the same mysterious force, and its factories and industrial establishments are electrically operated. In few cities indeed is the electric energy more generally utilized.

Among its notable structures a few demand special mention. First in popular interest, perhaps first also in historic significance, is the great "Mormon" Temple, constructed throughout of solid granite from the eruptive exposures of the Wasatch. The corner-stone was laid April 6, 1853, and the completed Temple was dedicated April 6, 1893. During the four decades occupied in the work over three and a half millions of dollars were expended on the structure. Let it be remembered that the building was begun amid most meagre facilities for such an undertaking--when the services of several yoke of oxen were required for the bringing of a single block of granite from the famed Cottonwood Cañon a score of miles south of the city. Of the four temples already erected in the vales of Utah, the one at Salt Lake City was the first to be commenced and the last to be finished.

The domed roof of the Tabernacle has attracted the attention of every one who has seen even a picture of the city. In some of its architectural features the building is unique. It covers an area of 250 x 180 feet and has a seating capacity of eight thousand. The colossal roof-arch springs from wall to wall without a supporting pillar. Within is the monster organ, which for size and scope is approached by few instruments in the world. It was constructed in early days from native material by Utah artisans, and has been regarded as a marvel of mechanical and artistic achievement.

The story of Salt Lake City is really a chapter of "Mormon" history. To-day its population would probably show a majority of non-Mormons, but the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the dominant sect in city and State. Numerous other churches have established themselves; many of them have reared imposing sanctuaries and are active in the promulgation of their doctrines.

Non-Mormon citizens have been as ready and earnest in their efforts to build up and sustain the city of their choice as have their Latter-day Saint fellows; and the present beauty, strength, and vitality of the inter-mountain metropolis are largely due to non-Mormon, or "Gentile," enterprise and energy. The "Gentiles" have ever been the more prominent in mining undertakings, and the large and paying mines of to-day are mostly theirs. Salt Lake City does not belong to the "Mormons"; it is the possession of its citizens without regard to religious profession or political preference.

Since man and nature combined their energies in this once desert spot, the favored situation, the many natural advantages have yearly grown more apparent. Located at the very base of the Wasatch, bounded in part by a spur of this majestic range, the city possesses a wealth of mountain scenery beyond description. The valley floor is part of the bed of an inland sea of Quaternary age; and the benches and hills constituting the choicest residence portions are the terraces of this ancient lake, or the deltas of the prehistoric streams whose mouths were at the present cañon openings. Capitol Hill and the Northeast Bench are parts of the great delta constructed by City Creek in Lake Bonneville. Of this Pleistocene water body, approximately equal to Lake Huron in extent, the present Salt Lake, in spite of its common appellation "great," is but a diminutive fragment.

The present population as attested by the recent census returns is 53,531; though the current city directory, compiled immediately after the census enumeration, gives names and addresses of nearly seventy thousand resident inhabitants. The city's growing importance as a manufacturing, commercial, railroad, and mining centre is generally recognized: while its enterprise, progressiveness, and wealth are of national repute. But beyond all such it is to be characterized as a city of homes. From cottage to mansion its residences are very generally owned by their tenants. Its citizens are, for the most part, permanent residents and the city is theirs. Its increase has been that of development rather than of growth; the distinction is a vital one, for it characterizes the expansion of the living organism as against mere accretion of substance.

With such a development in the course of less than five and a half decades, what shall be its condition and status when its years have linked themselves into centuries?

FOOTNOTE:

[16] Some secular officials, such as marshals and other peace officers, had been chosen, but these were generally nominated by the Church leaders and elected or "sustained" by vote of the people in Church gatherings. The secular power exercised by the Church officials was expressly delegated to them by vote of the people.

SPOKANE

THE CITY OF THE INLAND EMPIRE

By HAROLD BOLCE

Sculptors have not yet chiselled the glory of the founders of Spokane, for most of the pioneers of that city, heedless of remote epitaphs, still hurry over its now "populous pavements," multiplying their wealth. Boys born in the first year of the city's incorporation have not yet reached the age of suffrage. Less than thirty years ago the settlement began with three citizens and a sawmill. It has developed into a brick and granite city of nearly fifty thousand.

A century ago a few brave men blazed perilous trails through the wilderness of the far Northwest but their picturesque adventures gave no hint of the city of wealth, industry, and architectural beauty that was to rise on both banks of the Spokane cataract. Though Jefferson's renowned secretary, Meriwether Lewis, and his comrade Clark, brother of George Rogers Clark, heralded the day when the Oregon and its affluents should hear sounds more significant than their own dashings, their pilgrimage had become as dim as a tradition to the men of the present generation who first floated Coeur d'Alene tamarack and cedar down the swift Spokane to their sawmill at the falls.

On the Spokane River not far from its confluence with the Columbia the Northwest Fur Company built a post more than ninety years ago, and thence reckless _voyageurs_ found their way through the solitudes, pausing to trade at the villages of the Spokanes, the Flatheads, the Umatillas, the Walla Wallas, the Nez Percés, and others, taking red women cheerfully in marriage and as cheerfully deserting them when occasion called. In this remote frontier, beyond the utmost reach of ethics or law, in a region with a cloud upon its national title, the pioneers fulfilled their semi-savage destiny. Nelson Durham, a writer of Spokane, has patriotically designated the Spokane Plains as the site of the annual horse-racing and saturnalia of these skin-clad trappers and traders, but they left no landmarks and the noise of their revelry had long since died away when the first Anglo-Saxon, lured by the roar of the falls, came to harness those tumultuous waters to his wheel.

There is a tradition that the Spokane Indians shunned this now famed succession of wild cascades, for in the foaming maelstrom at the foot of the falls dwelt a malign goddess, her long hair streaming in the cataract, her shimmering figure half revealed in the enveloping mists of spray. While the waters danced about her she sang merrily and the sound of her singing was like the warbling of a thousand birds. With her outstretched arms she lured Indian fishermen and devoured them. Her flowing hair was a trammel that enmeshed her victims. None had ever returned. Shaman after shaman, under his totem pole, had unavailingly invoked his tomañowash incantations to destroy her power. Then Speelyai or Coyote, the great Indian god, transforming himself into a feather, floated over the falls and was speedily engulfed by the evil goddess. Assuming the form of a strong warrior he began his campaign. Around him were the wrecks of skin and bark canoes, the forms of unnumbered members of his tribes, and a bedraggled eagle which proved to be Whaiama, god of the upper air. With a stone axe Speelyai hewed his way through the monster's side and Whaiama bore the resurrected company to the high banks of the Spokane River. Now Speelyai pronounced a curse upon his groaning enemy. Her career as a destroyer was at an end. Henceforth she might entice some helpless wanderers from distant tribes, but the chosen ones she should destroy no more. And the god prophesied in conclusion that a better race would come some day, a strange people, whom she could not conquer, and who would bind and enslave her forever.

These falls, whose total volume equals the power of forty thousand horses, turn the wheels of factories the value of whose exports to China, Japan, and other lands is expressed in millions. The waterpower speeds electric street-cars over ninety miles of track, and conducts electricity through two hundred and fifty miles of arc mains. All the elevators and printing-presses of the city are operated by power from the falls, and to this all-supplying current are attached many sewing-machines, typewriters, phonographs, graphophones, churns, electric fans, music boxes, door-bells, burglar alarms, clocks, and hundreds of other contrivances calling for constant or occasional motive power. Spokane is credited with being the most modern and best-equipped city in the world, and this is due, first, to the falls whose power brings many utilities, considered luxuries in other communities, within reach of the lowliest consumer; and secondly, to the singular fact that the city is newer than the telephone, the electric light, and other latter-day inventions and discoveries. There were no ancient institutions and prejudices to supplant. To children reared in Spokane, other cities seem archaic, their streets sloven, and their homes grotesquely behind the times. A girl from Spokane visiting in New York is known to have written home about the bizarre appearance of "electric cars drawn by horses."

London gropes by night through dismal glimmerings of gas and it would require millions of reluctant pounds sterling to substitute more modern light. In the new city of Spokane it was the most natural procedure to install the latest conveniences of modern life. When the little settlement was but a cluster of ambitious cabins every abode had its telephone and its electric lights. The Spokane workman does not stumble up the steps of a dim tenement. Lumber is cheap and in variety, and even Spokane granite is within his means. He dwells in a good home. A click of a button at the door floods the dwelling with light. Sputtering wicks have no place in his economy. He can afford, too, to order his groceries by telephone or use the same medium to discuss politics with a friend in a distant part of the city. All members of polite society in Spokane have telephones. A lady planning an impromptu tea or lawn party gets out her calling list, reaches for the telephone, and issues her amiable summons. A great amount of local business is transacted over the wires in the city. The power of the falls likewise enables the telephones of Spokane to talk and trade with a thousand towns, the distant city of San Francisco coming within the Spokane circuit.

Thus, in the employment of waterpower to serve the city in manifold ways, the Indians say, has been fulfilled the prophecy of Speelyai that a race would come which should yoke the goddess of the cataract in perpetual servitude.

In further fulfilment of the prediction that the demoniacal siren of the falls should no longer have dominion over his people, the Spokanes and kindred tribes shunned the river, and from a race of fishers, paddling bent and kneeling in their crude canoes, they became an intrepid race of horsemen. On horseback they rode to war or hunted the moose and antelope, and horses became the sign of wealth and the medium of exchange. For their obedience in carrying out the details of his malediction upon the water demon, Speelyai prospered them. Their wealth increased and their numbers multiplied. Their tepees were warm with many furs and picturesque with the trophies of battle and the chase. Their larders abounded with dried meat, meal, wapatoo, and camas root. They became the most valiant warriors between the Bitter Root Mountains and the sea. The power of the allied tribes of Eastern Washington became so formidable that the American Government was compelled to send its most skilful military leaders to effect their pacification, and it was not until Phil Sheridan eclipsed them in daring and General Miles forced Chief Joseph to capitulation that the scattered settlers in the Spokane country ceased to tremble at the impending descent of mounted savages.

By repeated violation of treaty stipulations, by burnings and massacres and thefts, they had asserted their dominion. In 1858 the Spokanes gave tragic demonstration of their determination to enforce the native declaration that the armies of the whites should never traverse their domain. In that year Colonel Steptoe, seeking to lead a detachment to garrison the post of the Hudson Bay Company at Colville, near the British border, was defeated with great slaughter by the Spokanes. With an unscalped remnant of his force he crawled at night from the scene of his disaster and, abandoning his guns, rushed in confusion back to Walla Walla. The god of Indian battles still reigned and the Government at Washington was alarmed. Then Colonel George Wright was chosen to command, a man whose merciless determination and sanguinary triumphs gave to his notable campaign a distinction not paralleled until the Sirdar of Egypt just forty years later led his expedition to Khartoum, silenced the dervishes near Omdurman, and hurled the severed head of the Khalifa into the Nile. The Spokanes did not attribute their defeat to the superior strategy of their pale-faced foe. Their fatal mistake, they said, was in making their last stand on the Spokane Plains, within sound of the exultant shrieking and sinister roaring of their ancient enemy, the evil spirit of the Spokane cataract, and it was she, not their white conqueror, who herded and stampeded them into terrified surrender. They had fought with abandoned daring, and had employed all their arts of strategy, but were forced back toward the abode of the water monster until her roaring mockery thundered in their ears. Now they set the tall prairie grass afire, and over the site of the coming city there blazed on that parched day of September 5, 1858, a conflagration no less formidable than war. It enveloped, but could not stay the pursuing column. Destiny was striding through flame and blood that day to open a way for civilized occupation of the Pacific Northwest. Hundreds of painted warriors, including the leader of the Palouses, a chief of the Pend d'Oreilles, one of the chiefs of the Coeur d'Alenes, and two brothers of Spokane Gary, the commander of the savage army, lay dead.

As if by a miracle, not one of Colonel Wright's soldiers fell, a further proof to the Indians that their evil goddess had presided over the conflict. In token of their subjection they brought their wives, children, horses, and all portable belongings and made complete offering at the feet of their conqueror. Thus the site of the present city of Spokane became the scene of one of the most striking and significant triumphs of civilized man over the aborigines of the American continent. What William Henry Harrison did at Tippecanoe for the old Northwest in scattering the allied natives under Tecumseh, Colonel Wright accomplished at Spokane Plains for the Northwest in demolishing the league of tribes under the Spokanes. It is true that Chief Joseph later, emulating the ambitions of Black Hawk, sought to reunite the tribes in rebellion against the whites, but though he succeeded in stirring the Federal Government to vigilant campaigns, he failed in his great object, just as did the successor of Tecumseh. Wright's sway was undisputed. Indians convicted of crimes he ordered hanged. Superfluous horses were shot. He spread terror as he moved, and peace followed in his footsteps.

But the Civil War and financial panic delayed the Western movement. In 1863 there were but ninety registered citizens in the Spokane country. And when the first sawmill came, in 1873, its wheels revolved slowly, for the failure of Jay Cooke delayed the transcontinental railway, that was to connect the city with the East. Eight years later, just twenty years ago, the first locomotive rumbled into the new settlement. Now there was to be a city. On September 1st of that year came the first lawyer, J. Kennedy Stout, and it is characteristic of the spirit that has ever continued to quicken the activities of the community that four days after his arrival he had drafted a charter for the city, taken the necessary legal steps toward its incorporation, and had been chosen its attorney.

In 1885, the city, numbering two thousand people, was an alert and distributing centre. Grain was pouring in from the fertile acres of the Palouse to be ground into flour, and the time was at hand when a remarkable discovery in the neighboring mountains of Idaho was to turn the tide of travel toward Spokane, and in less than a decade develop it into the greatest railroad centre west of Chicago. It was in that year that three men and an ass, in the Coeur d'Alenes, a few miles from Spokane, camped toward night in a desolate cañon. Their provisions were nearly exhausted. They held forlorn council, and decided to abandon their search for mines in those gloomy and precipitous solitudes. Toward sundown the animal strayed from its tether. They found it gazing across the ravine at a reflected gleam of the setting sun. A marvellous series of ore seams had mirrored the light. The dumb beast had discovered the greatest deposits of galena on the globe. The whole mountain was a mine.

Within an hour after the arrival of the sensational news at Spokane, that city's unparalleled boom began. Prospectors, engineers, and capitalists from the four corners of the Republic hurried to the new city. A railway magnate rode out on horseback to view the mountain, and within four months from the day of his visit ore was being shipped by rail to Spokane. North and south, for three hundred miles, mines were found on every mountainside, and every additional discovery hastened Spokane's growth and quickened the fever of its speculation. As a local historian said, "Men went to sleep at night on straw mattresses, and woke to find themselves on velvet couches stuffed with greenbacks." Wealth waited for men at every corner. The delirium of speculation whirled the sanest minds. Of the many clergymen, for example, who arrived to advocate the perfecting of titles to homes not made with hands, eleven abdicated the pulpit and, indifferent to the menace of moth and rust, laid up substantial treasure.

Five years from the discovery of the mines in the Coeur d'Alenes the city numbered twenty thousand inhabitants. Fire swept over it and laid twenty-two solid squares in ashes. Before the ruins cooled, the city was being rebuilt, this time in steel and brick and stone. The _Spokesman-Review_, which began its editorial career in a small, discarded chapel, soon moved into a ten-story structure, and that evolution was, in epitome, the story of the city. Architects of some renown designed palaces and châteaux for the wealthy. Every citizen hoped to outdazzle his neighbor in the beauty of his home, and this has resulted in giving Spokane unique distinction in architectural impressiveness.

Though Spokane has had abundant share of that rampant Western virility, the story of whose unrestraint would constitute a daring contribution to profane history, the city from the start displayed a dominating purpose that made for civic righteousness. It is true that during its earlier years there were many murders in Spokane, for citizens, in the midst of its hurrying events, were impatient of prolix complaints and the tardy judgments of the law. Nor did this reckless code much concern the hangman, for the legal execution of a citizen in Spokane would have been regarded much as the world would now look upon the shuddering crime of burning a Christian at the stake; yet in its blood-shedding there was little, if any, of the wanton element of anarchy, and upon few occasions in the history of the Northwest has crime stooped to assassinate from ambush. Outwardly calm, but with desperation in his mood, the insulted approached the object of his wrath and warned him to "heel" himself. Inevitable shooting marked their next meeting, and their funerals were not infrequently held simultaneously.

The bad man of melodrama is an execrable creation of fiction, whose counterpart was not long tolerated in Spokane's career, and who does not seem to have made his presence felt in other sections of the West. A desperado of the early days sent word from a neighboring town that, because of some dispute, he would kill a certain Spokane citizen on sight. The community could not afford to lose an influential pioneer, and the city fathers met to consider the outlaw's menace. They decided that, inasmuch as they would be called upon to execute him ultimately, they would better hang him before he had opportunity to pull his criminal trigger, and to this programme they pledged their official honor and forwarded notice of their grim deliberation to the desperado, who thereupon deemed it expedient to strike the Lolo trail that led to less discriminating frontiers. Spokane has outlived its lawless days. For several years it enjoyed the police protection of a noted bandit-catcher, whose nerve was unfailing and whose aim was sure. The ensuing hegira of criminal classes was a spectacle for other cities to contemplate with awe. During his stern _régime_, a riotous stranger, mistaking the temper of the community, flourished weapons and for a few agonizing moments made pedestrians his targets. The clamor brought the cool chief of police. "Did you subdue the stranger?" he was afterward asked. "We buried him the next day," was the reply.

In the few years that have ensued since the country's occupation by the whites, the once masterful Spokane tribe has degenerated, the Indians around Spokane to-day shambling about under the generic epithet of "siwash"; and a writer visiting this region in recent days came to the etymological conclusion that the first syllable in their unhappy title stood for "never."

Though Spokane is famous, its precise locality is not generally known. When it became ambitious and first held expositions, it ordered lithographic posters from Chicago. They came representing steamboats plying placidly in a river whose falls are as deadly as Niagara's. Spokane is twenty-four hours' ride from the cities of Puget Sound. It is three days' journey from San Francisco, and to go from Spokane to Helena or Butte is like travelling from Chicago to Denver. Its future must be great. It has no rival. Eight railroads, three of them transcontinental, assert its supremacy. Southward stretches the most prolific grain empire in the world. Almost boundless forests of valuable timber cover surrounding mountains to the north and east, whose mineral wealth is beyond compute.

A typical Westerner, in an interesting autobiography, states that the ass that discovered the mines of the Coeur d'Alene, and thus caused a stampede of civilization to Spokane, was buried with the ceremonial honors due a potentate. It takes conspicuous place in distinguished company. On the heights of Peor an altar was reared to canonize the ass that saw the Light the prophet Balaam all but passed. An ass by its braying wrought the salvation of Vesta, and the animal's coronation was an event in the festival of that goddess. For ages the Procession of the Ass was a solemn rite in religious observances. In Spokane, a favorite canvas pictures the Coeur d'Alene immortal gazing enraptured across a mountain chasm at shining ledges of galena. When explaining the various causes of the matchless development of Spokane and its tributary region, the resident, in merry mood, does not forget to pilot the visitor to this quaint memorial. Afterward there was litigation over the mineral wealth now valued at $4,000,000 located by this animal, the outcome of which was the following decision handed down by Judge Norman Buck of the District Court of Idaho:

"From the evidence of the witnesses, this Court is of the
opinion that the Bunker Hill mine was discovered by the
jackass, Phil O'Rourke, and N.S. Kellogg; and as the jackass is
the property of the plaintiffs, Cooper & Peck, they are
entitled to a half interest in the Bunker Hill, and a quarter
interest in the Sullivan claims."