Whidbey Island, returning through Deception Pass to the east channel, and thence back the way they came to the Columbia River. In this expedition Simmons ascertained the advantages of the sound for commerce, and determined to settle there. In October he removed his family[1] to the head of Budd Inlet, where he took a claim which he called Newmarket, at the falls of Des Chutes River, where there was a fine water power. He was accompanied by James McAllister and family, David Kindred and family, Gabriel Jones and family, George W. Bush and family,[2] Jesse Furguson, and Samuel B. Crockett. This small company cut a road for their wagons through the dense forests between the Cowlitz landing and the plains at the head of the sound, a distance of sixty miles, in the short space of fifteen days. All settled within a circuit of six miles; and the first house erected was upon the claim of David Kindred, about two miles south of the present town of Tumwater,[3] the Newmarket of Simmons. Besides the half-dozen families above mentioned, and the two men without families who settled about the head of the sound in 1845, a few others were looking for locations in that country, three of whom were Wood, Kimball,[4] and Gordon.
Thus, by an effort to avoid the censure of the directors of the Hudson's Bay Company in London, some of whom had influence with members of the British cabinet,[5] by keeping American settlers south of the Columbia River, McLoughlin provoked their
- ↑ While at Washougal, in April, Mrs Simmons gave birth to a son, who was named Christopher, the first child of American parents horn in that part of Oregon north of the Columbia River.
- ↑ Bush was a mulatto, owning considerable property; a good man and kind neighbor. It is said he settled north of the Columbia because of the law against the immigration of negroes passed by the legislative committee of 1844. He took a claim near Olympia which bears his name, and where his family long resided.
- ↑ Evans' Hist. Or., MS., 281-2 Tumwater in the Chinook dialect means rapids; literally 'falling water.'
- ↑ Clyman's Note Book, MS., 100; Tolmie's Hist. Puget Sound, MS., 21. Tolmie is one year too early in his dates.
- ↑ Applegate's Views of History, MS., 43.
