Defying the 'Sassy' Indians on the Skagit

On the 2nd of this month, a party consisting of Ed. Littlefield, Timothy Derrick, Thos. Beam, and Geo. A. Cru left this place for a trip down the Sound. After spending a week around the salt water, they went up the Skagit. It took them four days to ascend the river, poling their own canoes and making about thirteen miles a day against a swift current, finally reaching about 75 miles up the river. They stopped in the settlement at the mouth of Baker river. On a slough opposite the mouth of the river are two houses, one American, and one German; no white women live above this place, which is some 60 miles from the mouth of the Skagit.

The party went about fifteen miles up the Skagit, above the mouth of Baker river; being about five miles above where the Sauk river unites into the Skagit. Nearly all the desirable claims, situated immediately on the river bank from its mouth up to a given distance above Baker river, are now taken.

Most of the land for the last ten miles of their trip is vacant land, and considered by them to be the best for farming purposes of any land they saw on the river. The timber is scrub maple and small brush, forming a light growth of timber easily cleared. Around the mouth of the Sauk is a very large tract of bottom land, in some places six miles wide, and it appeared to be little subject to overflow. There is room there for hundreds of settlers.

The Indians above Baker are very sassy and overbearing and grow worse the further the river is ascended. Above the Sauk, they will not allow white people to settle. This party they forbade going up the river, or even hunting; refusing to let them go ashore to build a fire to cook their dinner by, etc. They disregarded these threats and commands, and the Siwashes, seeing they had a 'skookum tumtum' [strong heart], let them alone. The settlers are very anxious that the proper Indian authorities would attend to them.