Squak Valley: by Bessie Wilson Craine (page 1-3 from original book)
Introduction
My friends have asked me many times to write about the life and the early happenings in Squak Valley. I guess they think if I don't get it down pretty soon I'll be too old to remember--but one doesn't easily forget the place she grew up in.
I told them I couldn't write a story. They insist that if I write it as I tell it, it will be good enough. I can't do that. When you are telling a story, you can begin at the end and go backwards; or start in the middle and go either way and it will be a good story. If you want your readers to get the picture you have to begin at the beginning. That is where my trouble comes.
I have to go back to about 1860 when the first settlers started to drift into the Valley, when Seattle was a mere infant and Squak Valley was a wilderness. It is located at the head of Squak Lake (now known as the Sammamish). Nature had given it a beautiful setting, about two thousand acres with the lake skirting it on the north and almost completely surrounded by mountains. The settlers found a stubborn growth of forest except for a few acres of prairie, covered with hazel bushes and a thick undergrowth--but the soil was rich and deep. All it was waiting for was men with the hearts of pioneers, willing hands and strong backs. Men like John Adams, Tom Cherry, the Castos, the Bush family, the Wolds and Ned Ohm. There were, no doubt, others who came at that time. I mention these because they are the ones I knew best as I grew up. They took up homesteads widely scattered through the Valley. Their only neighbors were Indians who lived in shacks and hovels at the head of the Lake. They were known as the Siwash, or Flatheads, very peaceable. In fact, they were too lazy to be much else. All they wanted was to be left alone to fish and hunt.
Natives Murder the Casto Family
Editor's note: The author incorrectly spelled the family's last name as "Castro" in her manuscript as published. The web site version is fixed to avoid spreading the error any further. Clarence Bagley writes about this same incident in his article Casto Massacre , and Roger Knowles Thompson has written an article entitled Abbie Casto's Fate.
In the Spring of 1864 William Casto and his pretty girl wife came to the Valley and built a small house in the heart of the wilderness. John Halstead, a friend, lived with them. Casto opened a small trading post for the convenience of the settlers and trappers. He was an up and coming young man. His free and easy manners won him many friends in the community. He had one fault--his liking for liquor which, in the end, proved his undoing.There was a great demand for hoop poles, used in the making of barrels. These were made from the hazel bush, of which there was a dense growth around Casto's home. He sent the poles to San Francisco, frequently receiving as much as $1,500 for a single shipment. It was a long route through Squak Lake, through the Squak Slough and across Lake Washington to Seattle, then on down to San Francisco by sailboat.
Mr. Casto found help among the Indians. Some of them proved quite industrious when given the chance and found that they were to be paid for their labor and a little liquor on the side. Casto had been warned many times, by the settlers, that it was bad business to give Indians liquor. He treated the Indians well. They seemed to like him and looked up to him as a white "Tyee" or chief.
That fall there were whispers of an Indian uprising that had grown out of trouble between some white men and the neighboring Snohomish Indians. A chief and two Indians had been killed.
Occasionally Casto's Indians had proved difficult to handle, especially when under the influence of liquor. Still he didn't heed the warning. On this fatal night he gave the Indians their liquor and went home to supper.
Tribal revenge is characteristic of the Primitive Indian-they don't easily forget. The killing of the Snohomish had been boiling up inside of them. On this particular night they planned their revenge--by taking the lives of the Casto family. The "Tyee's" life would avenge the other two Indians that were killed.
When they made their attack, Casto was killed instantly by a whizzing bullet. Another one got the pretty girl wife. Halstead fought valiantly for his life. When the bodies were found they were literally hacked to bits. Truly a crime of vengeance.
By this time the Indians had worked themselves into such a frenzy their main objective was to kill every white person they came in contact with. It was near dawn when they finished their fiendish work. They set out for Bush's, Casto's nearest neighbors, who had been warned by friendly Indians that the Indians were on the warpath, so they were not taken unprepared. The children were hidden under the beds and in places that bullets were least likely to penetrate. James Bush, his wife Martha, and two men who were staying there held the attackers off until daylight. By this time the liquor had spent its fury, and they attempted to make their getaway. An Indian by the name of Aleck had heard the shooting and sensed the trouble. He shot one fleeing Indian in the back. He later came upon another one in the woods and killed him with an ax. So ended the only Indian trouble in the Valley.
The following day, the Bush family took their personal belongings and with the help of Indians made their way across Lake Sammamish, the Squak Slough and across Lake Washington to Seattle, where they lived for a year before returning to the Valley.
History of Bessie's House
On the Adams' place was the oldest house in the Valley, a log cabin built by the Hudson's Bay trappers when they went through the Northwest in about 1860. No nails being used, hewn to fit, and put together with pegs, and caulked with moss and mud, I mention this cabin because thirty-one years later, it was to become my home.
Origins of the Gilman Coal Mines
Two years previous to this time, a Mr. L.B. Andrews homesteaded property, several miles from the Valley, on the site of what many years later was to become the Gilman Coal Mines. He had opened several veins and taken out what looked to him like very good coal. He took a small amount of this in a flour sack and carried it all the way to Seattle on his back. This he showed to a friend of his, a William Perkins, who pronounced it of excellent quality, the best that had come into Seattle at that time. They formed a partnership, but soon found that the development of the mine and the transportation far exceeded their capital. Mr. Perkins did go so far as to build a boat of about five-ton capacity. This was taken up the Duwamish and Black Rivers into Lake Washington, through Squak Slough and Lake Sammamish to Squak Valley, where it was loaded with the precious coal. This trip and return took about twenty days, a distance of one hundred forty miles. Not many trips such as this were made.
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