A Light in the Wilderness (31 page)

Rothwell’s howl, not heard for years, broke the conversation. Then, “Is that a cowbell, Mama?”

Letitia looked to where Martha pointed. She heard it too. No one seemed to be herding a cow down the trapper’s trail, but here one came, bell clanging.
Can that be Charity? That possible?
Rothwell limped his way toward the bovine.

“Charity?”

The cow sped up with the sound of Letitia’s voice, her bag swaying from side to side as she trotted, her back bones sticking out sharp against the landscape.

Letitia picked up her skirts and began running. “You old dear, where you been?”

That bell that Davey gave her on the day they spoke their vows, there it was, tarnished but still hanging around Charity’s neck. The children hugged the animal, petted her nose, let her bristly tongue lick at their arms. Roth sat and howled.

“Will you look at that,” Nancy said. “That old cow missed you all. She must have come around now and then looking for you.”

“Can’t believe the wolves or coyotes didn’t find her before we did.”

The cow’s bony back was caved in; skin scraped off her face, maybe where she’d scratched against a tree. But it was Charity. Letitia rubbed her fingers on the hawthorn blossom engraved on the bell, fingered the velvet of Charity’s ears. Next to the hands of her children and the holding arms of her husband, it was the most comforting touch in her world.

“It don’t matter now if we don’t find that whole herd or get the money for it either. I got the one cow I wanted back and justice. That’s all I need. All I ever needed.” She hugged her friend. “We sparrows be in good shape for the winter and all the winters to come.”

Into the wagon they loaded the cheese items she’d not taken from the springhouse: firkins, large spoons, strips of rennet, churns. Then the tea set and candlesticks, and two new platters made of Pacific yew that Little Shoot had carved for her. Letitia, Betsy, and Nancy hiked Coffin Butte together. Letitia wanted to remember the view and remind herself to go higher when she faced a challenge, to let wonder be the air she floated upward on, to look back only to see how she’d fought fear before and won. The bed Letitia’s children had outgrown she gave to Nancy for her youngest.

“It’s such a beautiful oak,” Nancy said, thanking her.

“It go with your quilt frame.”

At the top of the butte Betsy said, “We all go at same time.” Though the oldest of the three women, Betsy was the only one not huffing from the climb up Coffin Butte.

“I wish you come with us.” Letitia made the invitation.

“And I wish you could find a place near here to stay.” This was Nancy’s plea, but the women spoke, knowing all had been decided. This was time to say good-bye.

“I go with my people to the Grand Ronde reservation. We all go. Little Shoot has a wife. Soon a baby. We stay together.”

“But it isn’t fair.”

Betsy patted Letitia’s back. “Fair is a flying bird settling on a waving grass, resting before moving on. It must fly again, light again. Fair needs much attention. We meet again one day.”

Letitia couldn’t dispute her friend’s wisdom. She had a season of fairness and hoped there’d be other just moments in this quarrelsome place. Oregon hoped to become a state one day, join the Union. Maybe they’d leave the exclusion laws out for good. She hoped so. All along the way she’d had help with friends and strangers, people of many colors. Yes, she often had to ask for help. Thank goodness she had friends like Nancy and an attorney willing to take her case. But even the land sale had proven a gift. The new owner, a Mr. Fogel, planned to take possession that week. She’d met him. He seemed a good person, with farmer’s arms and a friendly wife who asked if there was a trail up that “funny butte that looks like a coffin.”

Letitia assured her there was, then showed her the orchard and told the story of its beginnings.

“I hope this place will come to mean as much to us as it does to you.”

“I’s hoping that too.”

To turn over the care of land she’d come to love to someone who would respect it gave Letitia hope. She might find another land to give her heart to, if not another husband. Cow Creek showed promise. The children seemed to like it there, despite the Indian skirmishes. With Charity, Letitia was building up another herd.

She and the children said their last good-byes to Betsy and Little Shoot and his wife, hugging and holding until it was time. At the wagon Letitia spoke again, not only to the land that had held them and sustained them through the years but to Davey. “You did us well, Davey Carson. You did us well taking us to freedom.”

Letitia drove the wagon and they stopped, leaving Nancy and her youngest off at her claim.

“I cannot tell you how much I will miss you.” Nancy held her friend.

“Don’t cry.” Letitia wiped her own cheeks. “I’s not so far away. I come be your midwife if you have another.”

Nancy laughed. “I think those days are over. But you will come back to visit, won’t you? And when Maryanne marries next month, you’ll return for that, yes?”

Letitia nodded.

“I never did enough for you, Tish. Goodness. You were always so much more giving.”

Letitia laughed then, held her friend’s hand. She wished she could find the words to tell this woman what her life had meant to her, how her faith and absolute acceptance of Letitia’s being had oozed strength into Letitia’s soul. “You are the tree that a sapling looks up to.”

“You’re sounding like your Kalapuya friend.”

“It could be. But I remember my mama saying it of her mama. We all need someone to look up to. It’s a thing to remember.”

The women laughed and then parted. Children reloaded in the wagon, a last hug between Letitia and Martha Hawkins. Then onward to a new beginning where a new candle would light the wilderness.

Letitia did go on to find new land to love in the Myrtle Creek Valley of southern Oregon. Once women—including widows, those with disabled husbands, and single women—were allowed to seek homestead patents, Letitia applied. She paid $11.92 on June 11, 1863, to apply. Six years later, on October 1, 1869, Letitia Carson received one of the first of seventy-one homestead patents issued in Oregon—one of only four women. From slave to landowner. Letitia (sometimes spelled Lutishia) spent the rest of her life in southern Oregon, acting as a midwife. Some say she ran a boardinghouse, and she was known as Auntie to many. She ranched and raised her children to adulthood and had grandchildren to spoil.

Adam, later called Jack, never married and stayed in that southern Oregon region his whole life working as a teamster. Martha did marry Narcisse Lavadour and moved with her husband to the Umatilla Indian reservation in northeast Oregon where many of her descendants still reside.

Letitia was born in Kentucky around 1818. We find her in Missouri leaving with David Carson and giving birth to one of the first mulatto children born on the Oregon Trail. (A nearly all African
American wagon train crossed the continent in 1844 under the direction of George Washington Bush, and it is likely a child was born on that journey. That group headed into Washington Territory where it was believed they’d receive a warmer reception than from a territory fond of passing exclusion and lash laws.)

We do not know if Davey signed any agreement, but the nature of that commitment was reported by Letitia and was the basis for her lawsuits. She did sue Greenberry Smith twice and won both times. The second jury trial was attended by prominent people in Oregon’s history, including future Oregon supreme court judges, a US Marshal, and a US attorney, in addition to Judge Williams, who presided. Perhaps it was a test case or one that would wage the sentiment of the inclusion of Oregon entering the Union as a slave or free state.

Letitia died in 1888 and is buried in the Bryant cemetery on private land in Douglas County. Adam is buried next to her.

David Carson was born in Ireland. He did apply for citizenship in 1844 and it was granted in the fall of 1846, a year after arriving in Oregon. In December 1845 in the Willamette Valley, he claimed 640 acres under the provisional government rules and had to re-register in 1850 when the Donation Land Act was passed. Then he could only keep 320 acres because he had no legal wife, as people of color were not allowed to marry white persons. He was a patroller in Platte County, Missouri, and named a captain on the overland journey. He did fall asleep while on duty on the Oregon Trail and brought a lawsuit over the slave Eliza White. He made the Walk-up Trail around Mount Hood, getting caught in a terrible storm and milking a cow into her cowbell turned upside down. That precious liquid saved more than one life, as Mrs. Walden did indeed nearly die from the elements. People called him “Uncle Davey” for his generous spirit and heartiness, and he was also known as an old trapper for his exploration during his time in North Carolina. Davey died September 22, 1852, in the Soap Creek Valley. His grave site is unknown.

Evidence given by the witnesses (Walker and Knighton) is as described. Letitia owned the cows, had given Davey money to buy a cow from Knighton back in the states. So she must have either been free and earning money at the time, or a slave allowed to work outside, giving portions of her earnings to her owner. There is no evidence that she was owned by anyone nor is there evidence that she was free. G.B. Smith did claim he had a bill of sale for her, but he never produced it, and as the cases went against him, if he had such a paper, it would make no sense for him not to produce it. He did make the payments against the judgments as portrayed, and the issue with the herd is as conveyed.

G.B. Smith encountered court activity back in Missouri and may well have been a patroller there. Missouri as a state did not have large plantations and most slave owners had fewer than ten slaves. But the slavery movement was strong and intense and patrollers protected “the property” of white owners with active patrols. Davey was named a patroller in 1838. In Oregon, Greenberry Smith became wealthy and prominent and later active in the Golden Knight society, a form of the Ku Klux Klan active in Oregon after the Civil War. G.B. Smith went on to buy the entire town of Tampico, a rival of Corvallis, and then put everyone there out of business. One wonders at his motivations. Curiously, G.B. Smith planted an apple orchard in the Soap Creek Valley that still stands, the apples from a Missouri nursery.

David Carson “ Junior” took a claim of 160 acres as noted, but he did not make the overland journey with the Carsons. Instead he arrived shortly before his father’s death with an Andrew Carson, relationship uncertain. No evidence can be found to actually link him to David Carson except for G.B. Smith’s documents referring to him as “Junior” and the land records showing his claim on what had been a portion of Davey Carson’s original claim of 640 acres. He may have been a nephew, but I’ve portrayed him as Davey’s son. The law permitted Davey to file on only 320 acres after the Donation Land Act of 1850. Davey may well have tried
to continue use of the other 320 acres, even encouraging “Junior” to farm 160 acres of it. Junior was allowed to make a land claim as a single man who had not been in Oregon country for four years or more.

Sumner Read was not the last child of Nancy White Hawkins Read. Charles arrived in 1857, and Columbia in 1863, with Nancy raising twelve children, eleven to adulthood. A bed said to have once belonged to Adam Carson was handed down through the Read family via Charles Read. It resides now at the Benton County Historical Society. My thanks to Mary Gallagher and Irene Zenev of the Historical Society for their help in research and their encouragement. The story surrounding Dr. Zachariah Hawkins’s death in Idaho is based on information in genealogical files and the work of Donna M. Wojcik in
The Brazen Overlanders of
1845
(1976). Nancy did remarry in the fall of 1846 and did not begin probating her husband’s estate until February of 1847, perhaps the time when she truly believed he would not be coming home. Many widows quickly remarried as both a means of survival and potential land acquisition, as a wife was allowed 320 acres, along with her husband. Had Letitia been white and married, she would have inherited the farm she and Davey claimed. The Reads did settle at the southeast end of the Carson claim and were neighbors until Letitia’s move to the Cow Creek Valley.

Sarah Bowman remarried in 1852 to David Davis, an apparent colleague or friend of Greenberry Smith. That the Bowmans gave Letitia her freedom in Missouri is author speculation. The court record does not tell us why Sarah had been summoned as part of Letitia’s suit, only that she was never deposed. Both Letitia and the Bowmans came from Kentucky to Platte County, Missouri, so Letitia and the Bowmans may have known of each other. In Oregon, the Davis family did live 2.5 miles northeast of the Carsons. Could Sarah have confirmed the arrangement between Davey and Letitia? Unanswered questions.

Joseph and Frances Gage and their children lived north of the
Carsons in Polk County. On at least one occasion, the Gages provided respite to Davey and Letitia and their children when one of them was ill. They moved from the Soap Creek Valley to the Myrtle Creek area of Southern Oregon about the time that Letitia left and had claims within riding distance of each other there.

The Kalapuya woman, Betsy, and her grandson Little Shoot are composites of the Kalapuya people who lived for generations in the Soap Creek Valley. The lives of these peaceful people are graciously portrayed in
The World of the Kalapuya: A
Native People of Western Oregon
by Judy Rycraft Juntunen, May D. Dasch, and Ann Bennett Rogers (published by Benton Historical Society, 2005). They sustained themselves from the land and were removed to a reservation area they were unfamiliar with (and where no shelters had been provided) in 1857, two years after the 1855 treaty signing of national tribes that created the reservations around the country. That Betsy could have met and lent sustenance and friendship to Letitia is speculation—but legitimate speculation. A band of the Kalapuya were allowed to remain on their land in the Yoncalla area rather than move to the reservation through the efforts of early pioneers Jesse Applegate and his family. I have come to believe that these women of color would have formed a bond to help them tend, mend, and befriend. It could be a model for us all.

Oregon did declare slavery illegal in 1844 while adding the famous “Lash Law.” It was deemed too harsh—whipping a black person twice a year until they left the territory—and was replaced with forced labor in December of that year. It was repealed in 1845. In 1849 Oregon passed another exclusion law prohibiting persons of color from being in the state. It was repealed in 1854, then reinstated in 1857 by popular vote. On February 14, 1859, Oregon became the first state to enter the Union as a free state with an exclusion clause in its constitution, a clause that was not repealed until 1926, though the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 would have taken precedence over the exclusion law ever being enforced.

Apple saplings were left behind at Fort Hall, but whether Letitia
picked any up there or acquired seeds is pure speculation. An apple tree on or near the Carson land claim was named the Letitia Carson apple tree by Dr. Bob Zybach, completing an Oregon State University Forest Research Project, a fitting memorial to a woman who grew to be a strong and sturdy soul.

The historic Soap Creek Valley that Davey and Letitia settled in is encircled by Forest Peak, Smith Peak, Oak Hill, Coffin Butte, Glenders Hill, and Vineyards Hill. It’s nourished by Soap Creek. The California Trappers Trail skirts the Carson claim. Davey and Letitia may well have made their living selling goods such as hides, butter, bacon, and beef to people heading to the gold fields or settling the southern portions of the state. Firkins were some of the items sold at the auction, suggesting cheese-making was a part of the Carsons’ lives. Davey may well have joined the migration south in 1849 when the great gold rush began.

The settling of Davey’s estate is as portrayed and based on actual probate and court records. Theologian Paul Tillich once wrote that “power without love is injustice; and love without an awareness of power will never achieve justice.” That Letitia achieved justice in a hostile legal environment speaks to her courage, to her willingness to transform herself from fitting in to standing out, to her faith and the generosity of friends.