John Rogers James, an early pioneer of South Thurston County, wrote his memoirs before his death in 1929 and listed the names of people who settled Grand Mound in its early years — the same families who organized in 1855 to protect their families at Grand Mound during the Indian Wars of 1855-56.
Among those families were the Goodells, who settled on 640 acres of what became known as Goodell Point, with Josephus Axtell living a little farther up the road. Others listed in the memoir are Bill Cooper, L.D. Durgan, Augustus Gangloff, James Biles (who lived across from the James family on Scatter Creek), Austin Young, Nelson Sargent, Asher Sargent, Bartholomew Baker, Henry Hale, the Canby brothers (who settled near present-day Rochester), Rev. Charles Byles and Lawton Case.
Farther from Grand Mound toward present-day Tenino were William Mills, Abraham Tilley, Ignatius Colvin, Aaron Webster, Reuben Crowder, Oliver Shead, William and Phillip Northcraft, Hiram Mize, Alex Yantis and the Ticknor family, relatives of Sidney and Nancy Ford who lived near what is present-day Centralia. Other early settlers in the area were the Hogdens, Davenports, Captain Benjamin Lee Henness, Samuel Coulter and James Kirtley.
As more white pioneers settled in the Pacific Northwest, Washington Territorial Governor Isaac Stevens called meetings with the tribes to create treaties. Talks broke down because the Native tribes correctly insisted the land was theirs and always had been, and James wrote, “they were entitled to pay for their lands.”
As part of their negotiations, James said, the government planned to create a reservation at Grand Mound, and Col. Michael T. Simmons with several other men arrived at their cabin to tell the family they had to move.
“Father not being at the house at the time, Mother gave him a piece of her mind,” James recalled. “She said they had journeyed a long way to find a place to make a home, and this suited them, and we intended staying here, had found the Indians friends and no objections made.
“The colonel made the most sweeping bow we boys had ever seen from a man on horseback and, as he turned in his saddle, he said, ‘Good day, Madam; I have advised you.’ Father when he came home hardly knew what to think of the bluff Mother gave the colonel, he being a man in authority. Anyway, it passed off and the settlement filled up with families rapidly. There was no more talk of a reservation on Grand Mound Prairie.”
But the unrest among the tribes remained. Stories filtered to Grand Mound of rumblings among the Yakama and other tribes east of the mountains. In late 1855, a company of volunteers under Captain Gilmore Hays traveled east but, at the summit in the Cascades, messengers told them that Muckleshoot, Klickitat and White River natives had killed families near White River between present-day Auburn and Kent. The Jones, Brannon and King families of settlers — nine people in all — were killed, although several children escaped.
At the outbreak of hostilities, Judge Sidney Ford gathered Chehalis Indians at his place and asked them to give up their guns. Men removed locks from most weapons so they couldn’t be used. In exchange, the government provided the natives with a supply of beef and other provisions. Those who wanted to visit friends received a permit to do so and carried a flag of truce on a stick.
“I was amused to hear some of the guard at the fort breathing out threats when a party of Indians were hurrying by with a red handkerchief tied to the top of the stick,” James wrote. “I knew the Indians quite well and plead ignorance as an excuse for flaunting a red flag in their warlike times.”
News of the deaths at White River prompted the community to plan. Near David Byles’ place, Nelson Sargent stood at an elevated spot on the open Grand Mound prairie with a heavy blackboard blowing in the wind and said, “This is an ideal spot for the fort as we can guard it from all directions.”
They decided to build a stockade, which they named Fort Henness, likely after Captain Benjamin Lee Henness, who led the Washington Territorial Volunteers during the Puget Sound Indian War.
Settlers from miles around hauled timber, dug a trench, planted 12-foot-long logs on end and constructed a stockade with bastions, or block houses, on two corners diagonally from each other with loop holes for guards to shoot from the upper floors. Two wide plank doors provided the only entrance and exit to the fort, which measured 100 by 130 feet. Altogether, 227 men, women and children from nearly three dozen families lived in split-cedar lean-tos inside Fort Henness for about 16 months during the conflict. A log cabin served as a central guardhouse.
“The families were allotted space for their little lean-to shacks by the inside wall,” James wrote. “In one corner a well was dug. On the center of the enclosure, a guardhouse was built, a general rendezvous or meeting place. … We moved into this stockade in the fall of 1855.”
Among those who took shelter at the fort were the families of J. Axtell, C. Baker, E. Baker, J. Biles, J. Borst, C. Byles, D. Byles, J. Canby, L. Case, S. Coulter, J. Croll, L. Durgin, D. Frost, J. Goodell, W. Goodell, C. Hagen, H. Hale, H. Hall, B. Henness, A. Hill, S. Hodgen, S. James, W. King, S. Kirtley, J. Laws, J. Lum, A. McCormack, W. Metcalf, W. Mills, W. Mize, J. Remley, J. Roundtree, A. Sargent, C. Saylor, J. Smith, A. Tilly, R. Waddell and A. Yantis.
Others opted to remain in their homes — among them the Fords, George and Mary Waunch, George Washington and Patterson Luark.
Grand Mound settlers also called a meeting to organize a company of volunteers under Captain B.L. Henness with E.N. Sargent as first lieutenant and Samuel Coulter, half-brother to Henness, as second lieutenant. David Byles served as orderly sergeant and George Biles as corporal.
“Brothers Samuel, William and Thomas enlisted,” James wrote. “I wanted to enlist, too, but Father held me back, saying he wanted to keep one boy at home, and so I was enrolled with the Home Guard, as we had to leave someone to protect the women and children when the company was away scouting.”
Samuel James obtained five Army muskets in Olympia. John Rogers James, stationed at one of the four sides of the stockade, took a four-hour shift each night.
“I was a militia man and very proud of my musket, with its long bayonet,” James said. “I would often leave the fort after standing my four hours night guard duty and walk across the prairie three miles to the home place in order to get the sheep out to pasture early in the morning as we had to keep them corralled from the coyotes at night.”
The native families living on the upriver side of the James place stayed in their homes, although hostiles often came after dark onto the prairie, hollering “Who-ho, Who-ho.” James said the hostile Native Americans tried to entice the Chehalis Indians to join them.
As the guards checked on their homes, James wrote, “We took some chances of being waylaid by the ‘Salix tillicum’ (the fighting Indians) as the peaceable Indians called them.”
One night while checking on the family farm, he heard noises and decided to sleep in the open shed of the barn with the hogs, but the disagreeable scent and groans, grunts, and squeals kept him from sleeping.
In the spring of 1856, Captain Francis Goff and 26 recruits erected a blockhouse south of Grand Mound at the confluence of the Skookumchuck and Chehalis rivers with help from local pioneers Patterson Luark, James Lum, and Joseph Borst. It was used to store grain but never for protection of pioneers.
As concerns about the hostilities diminished, the settlers organized a school and hired Joseph Hubbard to teach in the upper room of the northwest bastion of the fort, where they had built benches and desks.
“So we combined soldiering with education,” James said.
Hubbard also organized a school exhibition or play.
“When it came to attending another term of school, we were forted up on the Mound,” James wrote. “Father put his foot down and said he would look after my schooling after this.”
When the time came for John’s older brothers to re-enlist, their father objected as regular troops should be sufficient to quell any problems. They moved back to their farm in the spring of 1856 but lived for a bit with the Metcalf family on top of the Mound during a scare.
“From my recollections of the incidents of this period, I am satisfied it takes just as much nerve and courage to oppose the war or military enthusiasm as to participate in the fight,” James wrote.
After church and Sunday school one afternoon, the James family returned home and met two men of the baser sort riding away from their place. They found a bottle of whiskey and an Indian with a whip by the gate, but that night they learned a native had been killed about three-quarters of a mile from their house. The whip belonged to the dead man. The men often gave whiskey to Indians and then walked them onto logs or planks and then shoved them off. They wanted the James family to be blamed to stir up trouble between them and natives, but it didn’t work.
“I wore the first pair of shoes made in this part of the country of home manufacture,” James wrote. “Mr. Byles made them. He got the measurements of my feet as I stood on the ground.”
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Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at memoirs@chaptersoflife.com.
