Walla Walla in the 1860s

Walla Walla in the 1860s
By Dale Raugust

After the death of Marcus Whitman in 1847, the Walla Walla Valley was not regarded as a suitable place for settlement. Following the massacre the military waged a campaign against the Cayuse Tribe which was followed in 1855-56 by the Yakima war and the vigilante reprisals by the civilian militia, and then in 1857 the Steptoe and Wright battles for control of the northern Inland Empire. These conflicts were not conducive to settlement anywhere in Eastern Washington. It was not until 1859 that the area was considered pacified enough to allow settlement. The only non Indians north of the Snake River prior to 1859 were fur trappers of the Hudson Bay Company and missionaries. The soldiers at Fort Walla Walla which numbered about 270 in the 1860 census were in need of supplies, services and entertainment. The suppliers of these services were to form the nucleus of the new community of Walla Walla. William McQuirk set up the first store selling general merchandise in a tent in 1857. By the fall of 1857 he had competition. “By 1859 a mongrel collection of tents, cabins, and shacks of various descriptions dotted the landscape adjacent to the fort.” There was no planning for this community. Buildings were built where they could be located without a great deal of trouble, in breaks of the trees or along Mill Creek. The town was almost exclusively male and rowdy with the favorite pastime being horse racing and gambling. It was no more than a “trading camp, to supply the needs and demands of the soldiers and officers at the army post….” The town did not yet have a name. In 1859 the newly elected Walla Walla County Commissioners met to discuss their first order of business. Within the minutes of these meetings the town we now know as Walla Walla was first called Steptoeville. On July 2, 1859, by motion made and passed the name of the town was changed to Wieletpu, however at the next regular session of the commissioners the town was still referred to as Steptoeville. At the meeting held on November 7, 1859, another motion was made and passed which changed the name to Walla Walla.
“In January, 1859, the territorial legislature passed a measure providing for the organization of government in Wala Walla County, now reduced to include only the area south of the Snake and east of the Columbia.” That same year the government of Walla Walla County was established and Walla Walla was chosen in an election as the county seat. “On December 20, 1959, the territorial legislature…granted a charter for an institution of higher learning to be located at Walla Walla and called Whitman Seminary.” The town was not officially incorporated until January 11, 1862.
When gold was discovered near the Clearwater River in Idaho in 1859, Walla Walla became the jumping off and supply point for the minors. Within a year the town had grown from a supply post for the military to a community of several hundred people. Steamship navigation from Portland to the Fort was established in 1858, and in1859, a four mill was built which allowed the farmers to process their gain locally and supply the farmers and townspeople with flour. The first orchards were also planted in 1859. “The gold rush created a tremendous demand for grains of all kinds.” Gold also created tremendous inflation. “In 1861, wheat sold for $2.50 a bushel, and flour was $1.00 a pound at the mines. Hay sold for $125.00 a ton in the winter of 1861-62, butter at $3.00 a pound and eggs at $1.00 a dozen and bacon and lard at $1.25 a pound.” These prices subsided once the gold rush was over but by that time a second industry had been established in the Walla Walla Valley as hundreds of homesteaders had claimed parcels or land and were now making a good living farming.
Walla Walla in the 1860s was like most frontier towns, overwhelmingly male. Not counting the soldiers and the minors and other temporary visitors to the town the population of the town itself was over 70 percent male in 1860. When the troopers and minors came to town many of them wanted whiskey, gambling and women. Individuals who were able to provide these services made money.
By 1861, the town’s first newspaper, the Washington Statesman, began publication. This newspaper started out as independent politically but by the time the Civil War was over and the paper had changed its name to the Walla Walla Statesman it was solidly democratic and “vociferous in its defense of President Johnson in his quarrels with the radical Republicans of Congress.” The articles which follow this introduction focus on different aspect of frontier justice as revealed through original court pleadings from the 1860s and the coverage of these cases and similar cases within the pages of the Washington Statesman Beall, Thomas “Pioneer Reminiscences” ed. William S. Lewis, Washington Historical Quarterly, VIII, No 2. April 1917, pp 86
( HYPERLINK "Http://ftp.us-census.org/pub/usgenweb/census/wa/wallawalla/1860/pg00018.txt" Http://ftp.us.census.org/pub/usgenweb/census/wa/wallawalla/1860/pg00018.txt)
Maxey, Chester C., “The Historical Walla Walla Valley”, The Walla Walla Story, McVay, Alfred, ed., Published by the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin in 1953. p11. Maxey’s article was first written in 1932. He was the President of Whitman College.
Ibid, Maxey, p.11
(T. C. Elliot, “The Mullan Road: Its local History and Significance,” The Washington Historical Quarterly, XIV, July 1923, p.208.)
Orchard, Vance, “The Name ‘Walla Walla’ and What it Means”, The Walla Walla Story, McVay, Alfred, ed., p.26. There is a second Walla Walla located in New South Wales, Australia, also from an aborigine’s source. Whitman College’s distinguished alumnus, Supreme Court Justice, William O. Douglas put together a collection of the meaning of Walla Walla in different languages. In Arabic, Walla means “By God” and in the Urde language it means “man’. In Chinese a man who is full of Walla Walla is full of hot air. In Tagalog, the language of the Philippines, Walla Walla means gossip or unreliable talk.
Ibid. Maxey, p 11.
Ibid, Maxey, p. 11.
Ibid, Maxey, p 12.
Ibid, Maxey, p. 12.
HYPERLINK "Http://ftp.us-census.org/pub/usgenweb/census/wa/wallawalla/ 1860/pg00001.txt" Http://ftp.us-census.org/pub/usgenweb/census/wa/wallawalla/ 1860/pg00001.txt).
Lyman, W. D. Lyman’s History of Old Walla Walla County, Chicago: S. J. Clark Publishing Company, 1918, p.131 and Whitman, S. E. The Troopers. New York: Hasting House Publishers, 1962, p.79 as cited in Hussey Lawrence L., Fort Walla Walla: Its Battles to Free the Inland Empire, Its Partner in the Valley, and Recent Excavations at the Fort Site. EWU MA Thesis in History, August, 1977 pp.54-55.
Available online at the Washington State Digital Achieves.
Ibid, Maxey, p. 14. Walla Walla’s second newspaper, the Walla Walla Union, a Republican paper appeared on April 17, 1869.