Gold Fever and Tribal Tensions: A Dispatch from the Sauk Mines

Last week, Mr. Packwood returned from east of the mountains, where he has been for nearly sixteen months. His account of his whereabouts and the work being done at the mines follows. He has been on the Sound only once with a pack train from Shoudy’s store at Ellensburg to Seattle in that time; most of his time was spent at the mines, except last winter when he stopped at Ellensburg, in Yakima valley. About four weeks ago, Mr. Mettlen and family reached the mines, coming over the Snoqualmie Pass from New Tacoma. He had been there previously, and went over to the Sound for his family, who returned with him. He is doing well at the mines, on first days cleaning up gold amounting to $8, and he has been doing that well ever since.

There are now at the Sauk mines eight white men and twelve Chinamen—before the Indians frightened them away, all but three or four left. These mines are about twenty miles from Ellensburg by a good wagon road, and ten miles from the other side of Snoqualmie Pass. The country has been only partially prospected; of the ground already known to pay reasonable wages, at least twice the number of men now at work could find employment. Packwood worked one month prior to the 4th of July steady in the mines, and averaged three dollars per day. He found one nugget that weighed $32, and another that weighed $18.50. The largest nugget found this season was by Mr. Flood, an old Puget Sounder, who found one last June weighing $153.

Just after the 4th of July, he went in company with John Shoudy, the storekeeper at Ellensburg, to visit Moses, head chief of the Wenatchie and other Indian tribes. Moses said he wished to live with the whites, but does not want to go on a reservation; if allowed to live there he will be peaceable, if forced to go to a reservation he will fight. The men of his tribe talked very friendly and were as sociable as any Indians he ever saw, and he saw no indications whatever of hostility while there. Mr. Packwood does not believe that there is any hostility meditated by any Indians in this Territory. He says that all the Indians desire is to be treated as white men are treated—to remove the discrimination from the law, give them the same rights, and subject them to the same responsibilities.