Settled In 1870
Part IX

By Edward Huggins
The Sunday Oregonian
August 26, 1900

I find that my explanation of the status of the Hudson's Bay and Puget Sound Agricultural Companies and their position and influence in Pierce, Cowlitz and Clark Counties, between 1846 and 1870. has occupied a great deal of space, but still, I think, the existence of these large companies in this section of the country will be news to a majority of the people now-a-days.

The story of my trip across the portage in 1850 must be left for some future time, as I think, in this, my effort to explain things. I have been tedious, and perhaps tiresome enough. The decision of the referee in the matter, of the companies claims, was made in 1870, and some time in June of that year the company made a formal surrender of every thing it owned, or claimed to own, under the treaty of 1846.

It was the opinion of almost every one that people claiming to own land under the donation act would not be allowed to perfect their claims, the act itself plainly forbidding the taking of claims upon the lands owned or claimed by the Puget Sound Agricultural Company, at the date of the treaty of 1846. In spite of that, there were many settlers upon these lands, some claiming 640, others 320 and others 160 acres of land.

In anticipation of these claims not being allowed, some of the best of them were jumped and grave trouble arose in consequence, which culminated in the death by violence of two men, said to be desperadoes, in Steilacoom, some time in 1870. Everything though came out all right in the end for the people. Selucius Garflelde was the delegate to Congress, and he was instrumental in getting a special act of Congress passed giving these claimants their farms.

There were several men claiming under the donation act upon the gravelly Nisqually Plains, and in 1893 or 1894 I wrote and published a paper, in the Tacoma Ledger, giving a short history of the donation act, and the names of the claimants, with the amount of land and the location of claims.