Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 16.djvu/174



156 T. C. ELLIOTT

hunters to the "Nez Perces Mines" belongs to E. D. Pierce; Capt. Pierce so called, though the title was not of official origin. This man had known mining life in California and British Columbia, had in some manner, possibly as a trapper, acquired an acquaintance with the Nez Perces Indians, could speak their language well and was allowed some freedom in their part of the country. That acquaintance probably ac- counts for his having been allowed by the army officers a nominal residence near Fort Walla Walla during the summer of 1858 where he lived for a while in a tent near the springs joining Garrison Creek on land now a valuable part of the City of Walla Walla. He owned fifteen head of cattle, but these were disposed of in the early fall to Lewis McMorris; and his squatter's right was sold to John Singleton and he himself departed for the Nez Perces Country. The word he sent out, or brought out in 1859 and the discovery of the rich camps of Pierce City and Oro Fino in 1860 caused the mining rush, which began in 1861 and reached its flood in 1862-63.

Prospectors and miners rushed into the mining districts of the Inland Empire literally by the thousands. The boats from San Francisco to the Columbia River were crowded to the guards, and the farming in the Willamette Valley suffered from lack of labor. It has been carefully estimated that in June, 1862, there were thirty thousand people in the various mining camps of Oregon, Washington and Idaho. While all of these did not reach the Interior country by way of the Columbia River a great proportion of them did. The boats from Port- land up river often carried more than two hundred passengers to the trip. In March, April and May, 1862, the tickets sold at The Dalles for passage on the three boats then plying on the upper river totaled over fifty thousand dollars. The "Tenino" took in eighteen thousand dollars for freight and passengers on one trip. These passengers all passed over the portage.

And if the gold hunters did not all go in by way of the Columbia, nearly all the freight which included the tools nec- essary for their work, the clothes necessary for them to wear,