Page:Recollections of My Boyhood.djvu/97



We had lived in the Willamette Valley seven years when father and my uncles decided to move to the Umpqua country. Father and Uncle Jesse had admired this part of Oregon very much when they passed through it while on the southern road expedition in 1846. Uncle Jesse settled there first and built the first cabin. When we had crossed the Kalapooya mountains he came to meet us and escorted us to his new home. We camped near his house for about ten days while father and Uncle Charles located their claims. They chose two sections lying directly east of Uncle Jesse's section. Father's section was the easternmost while the home of Uncle Charles was midway between the two, and was the gathering place of the young people of the three families. Looking back across the years, I still can see that gathering of happy young people. Days of toil were nothing, for we had that greatest of life's possessions, youth, with its hopes and dreams. Our first dwelling was built of logs, but in about two years after we settled in the valley a frame house was built. Brother Elisha doing the greater part of the carpenter work. After we were comfortably located, father built a flouring mill on a small stream not far from our dwelling. With the knowledge acquired from his old book on mechanics, Brother Elisha was able to do all the reckoning necessary in laying off the work to be done in making the machinery for the mi'l. This was the first mill for grinding grain built south of the Kalapooya mountains.

A half mile from our house was an Indian village. Here lived a small tribe called the Yangoler or Yoncalla Indians. They belonged to the Kalapooya tribe and spoke the same language. Our grist mill was only a few paces from this village and the footpath used by the Indians passed near the door of the mill. They were frequently in and about the mill and