Page:Recollections of My Boyhood.djvu/70

Rh was less than half a mile from our place. This man refused to let father use his yoke of oxen to haul a load of wood. He said he would not allow strangers to use them, as they might be spoiled.

I went to school all that winter. We children followed a foot path through wild shrubbery higher than our heads. After a rain we were well sprinkled from the wet bushes, and often arrived at the school house thoroughly soaked. The school room being a cold and cheerless place, we considered ourselves fortunate if we were dry by noon. I can remember no play time, no games, not even tag. The last school day I recall must have been near the close of the term, for I went from the old well near the school house door to the fence on the mission farm and saw that the wheat was as high as the fence.

Our people harvested on the mission farm, using sickles and scythes to cut the grain, which was afterwards bound into bundles or sheaves. My work was to stack the sheaves into shocks. A vine known as the ground blackberry had grown with the grain. When they cut the grain they failed to separate it from the vines, which were bent and twisted into loops all through the stubble, and were also in and around the bunches of bound up wheat and oats. My poor, bare feet had to wander in thorny paths and the scratches on my hands made me forget that I was tired and hungry. Sometimes I would find a sheaf securely bound to the earth by vines; in that case I had to pull the vines out of the ground before I could get the sheaf. By harvesting this crop our people supplied themselves with grain to take to the new settlement. The wheat was the red bearded variety.

Many families arrived in the Willamette Valley in November and December, and located in different parts of the country. The Waldoes, Kaisers, Looneys, and others went up the river and settled on the Waldo Hills, Chemeketa and valleys of the Santiam. The Millicans, Bakers, Holmans, Hembres, Hesses, Birds and others crossed the river and established settlements in the rich valleys of the north and south Yamhill.

When our families had been established in winter quarters in the deserted mission houses, the country west of the river was explored, and places for settlement selected on a stream