Gold in the Wenatchee—and a War Warning at Fort Simcoe
A hard-riding express reaches Steilacoom with word of 300 miners in the new Wenatchee and Naches diggings—and a settler's letter warning of a wider Indigenous war over the invasion.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
By the arrival in Steilacoom yesterday of Paul Anger, the express dispatched from here ten or twelve days ago to the Wenatchee, we have reliable and highly important intelligence from the new gold fields.
Mr. Anger was four days coming from the Wenatchee, having left it at noon on Monday last and reached Steilacoom at noon yesterday. He met three hundred miners at work: one hundred on the Wenatchee and two hundred on the Naches.
Communications received state that Mr. Plummer, dating the day he arrived at Fort Simcoe with miners on their way to and from the Wenatchee, says that at that time not more than a dozen whites had yet been over the hill. Mr. Anger states that he is desirous of returning to the Wenatchee as soon as he can get a company, and will leave in a few days.
Fort Simcoe, W.T., July 29, 1858. To the Editor of the Puget Sound Herald: Since leaving home I have had many little turns to make, and finally have turned up at this post, having 'run my back' on the Shawanah mines for the time being. Listen to my story: It is not a lie, but laughable and annoying. But discretion told me I must be off.
The Indians are partly divided for peace or war, but generally believe that the delegation that brought down with me will influence all the Indians west of the Rocky Mountains to join them in open hostilities against the whites. I have played my object out as well as it was in my power, but would not return with the young braves to their country, as they wanted. I am afraid of the consequences of the refusal of Maj. Garnett to listen to them. They want me to live among them in peace and represent them to the whites. In war, you may imagine what they want with me.
Our party is gone on, and if they have, since I left them, had energy and discretion, they are not far from the mines. There is plenty of gold on the upper waters of the Wenatchee, but the principal mines used are powder and ball, and strong nerves to use them.
“There is plenty of gold on the upper waters of the Wenatchee, but the principal mines used are powder and ball, and strong nerves to use them.”
The Wenatchee gold rush was part of a wave of intrusion into Indigenous lands that reshaped Washington Territory and its Native nations. The article's casual talk of 'powder and ball' and 'Indian war' is a reminder that booms were never only economic stories; they were contests over sovereignty and survival.
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