Ezra Manning Meeker (1830-1928)

It takes more than a good resume to get a government contract.

From: “An Illustrated History of the State of Washington”i, 1893.

zra M. Meeker was born at Huntsville, Hamilton County, Ohio, on the 30th of December, 1830. His parents were Joseph R. and Phoebe S. (Baker) Meeker. When Ezra was nine years old the funnily removed to Franklin County and in 1841 to Indianapolis. The only education he received was that afforded by about four months' attendance at the common schools of that city. In 1851 he went to Iowa looking for land to locate. A year later he came with his wife and family to Washington, making

Figure 1. Ezra M. Meeker. Photo from the Washington Secretary of State website.) Figure 2. Ezra Meeker as frontiersman. (Photo from Washington State Library.)

Copyright 2008 Jerry Olson November 1, 2009 2 the trip across the continent in the way usual at that time. They outfitted at Eddyville and made the passage by way of the North Platte, Bear River to Fort Hall and down the Snake and Columbia rivers to Portland, Oregon. They left Eddyville and crossed the Missouri River six miles below Council Bluffs, Iowa, on the 28th day of May and arrived at Portland about October 26. After a week at Portland they went on to St. Helens, where they remained about three months, when he located a claim where the town of Kalama, Washington now stands.

He sold this and came to Puget Sound, sending his wife in a canoe up the Cowlitz River, from Cowlitz Lauding to Olympia by ox-team, thence to Steilacoom, where they settled in 1853. He there engaged in merchandising until 1862, when they removed to Puyallup, where he cleared up a homestead. In 1867 he engaged in hop- Figure 3. Ezra Meeker Statue at the Puyallup Library. raising and went in partnership with his father, who had started in the business two years before. In 1868 he went into the mercantile business, which he conducted until 1881, when he sold it so Manon J. Meeker, his son. He was interested in the organization of the Puyallup Hop Company in 1891, and has been president of the company since. Mr. Meeker was commissioner in charge of the Washington exhibit at New Orleans.

He was married May 13, 1851, to Miss Eliza J. Summer, of Indiana. They have five children: Marion J., Ellen A., Carrie, Fred S., and O11ie.

From: “Pioneer Reminiscences of Puget Sound, the Tragedy of Leschi.”ii, by Ezra Meeker, 1905

CHAPTERXXXIV.

Defects and Results of Treaties.

Eight years after the events related in preceding chapters, and after the military reservation at Muckleshoot had been turned over to the Indians as a reservation, it had fallen to my lot to subdivide the township lying west of the reservation, where, many

Copyright 2008 Jerry Olson November 1, 2009 3 years before, only the township lines had been run. The line ran near the Muckleshoot prairie, and in the prosecution of the work it became necessary to retrace it. The survey alarmed the Indians, who feared that in some way the white man's compass and chain would endanger their title. They came to our camp to try to persuade me to quit the work, but I told them it was impossible to do so as I had contracted with the Government to survey the land and would be compelled to go on with the work. I was acquainted with nearly all of them, but that made no difference, as they could not understand what business I had to be surveying so near their homes, and I could not allay their fears

When, in the morning, the time came for running the line near their reservation, the Indians were out in force, but unarmed, and discovering by the work of the axman the course, placed themselves in the way, all the while pleading for us to desist, but offering no violence. Finally several took hold of the chain, and by that means completely blocked the work. My boys wanted to take the chain to the camp, but I said "No, leave it right where it is;" and we went to our camp and the Indians to theirs, a few hundred yards distant. No threats on either side had been made, but the Indians seemed determined to stop the survey. Right then and there we had an object lesson which, if it had been studied and acted upon before the war, would have saved the Government millions in money and hundreds of precious lives; that is, to give the Indian plenty of time to think and then reason with him. His mind moves slowly; but give him time and repeat patiently, as you would to a child. If you are in the right, ninety-nine times out of a hundred you will succeed by persuasion. I simply staid in my camp and restrained my boys from visiting the Indians.

Finally, in the evening, several of their head men came to "talk. "I repeated that my work would not endanger the title to their land. They then wanted me to go and see the Governor. I told them I had no business with Governor; that he (the Surveyor General) had sent me to survey the land, and that they would laugh at me if I went back to talk instead of being out in the field at work.

(Selucius Garfielde was then Surveyor General and Marshall F. Moore was Governor.) The Indians repeated they did not want me to survey, and I repeated what I had said before, to take time to think. I could only catch a word or two here and there in their native tongue when they talked between themselves, but enough to know they were canvassing what I had told them. It took us three days to settle the controversy, with a trip to Olympia, the Indians furnishing the transportation, with the result that their own men laid hold with us on the work with a will, and we remained friends for life.

There is a lesson in this transaction, if it could have been studied and acted upon while making the treaties with the tribe, which would have saved us from the horrors of that massacre, but a few miles distant, by these same men. The Indians had forcibly interfered with the work of a United States deputy surveyor, were clearly in the wrong, and troops would have instantly been sent to quell the uprising (God save the word; I have heard so much of it.) if they had been called. A few Indians would have been chastised, perhaps some killed, and then what? The answer has been rendered a thousand times by the blood of innocent people.

i Hines, H. K. (Harvey Kimball), 1828-1902, “An Illustrated History of the State of Washington”: containing a history of the State of Washington from the earliest period of its discovery to the present time, together with glimpses of its auspicious future, illustrations and full page portraits of some of its eminent men and biographical mention of many of its pioneers and prominent citizens of today: Chicago: Lewis Publishing Co. 1893. ii Meeker, Ezra, “Pioneer Reminiscences of Puget Sount, The Tragedy of Leschi.” Lowman Hanford Stationery and Printing Co., Seattle, WA, 1905