In a clearing, he found five men, two with bullets in their chests and bellies and three bludgeoned, their heads caved in.
All were stripped naked and mutilated. And all were Negroes, likely freed or escaped slaves from the South. No women or children, except for one small boy, about seven or eight, who was cradled in one man’s arms.
Isaac thought of his Jacob. Would his son run to him as this boy likely had during his final moments? What would his own thoughts be as he tried to defend his boy, his family? How many of the Indians would he take down with him before he succumbed?
These poor Negro folk likely had not been armed, or at least not armed enough to leave evidence of fighting back, although the Indians seldom left their own dead at the scene of the fight.
He had heard that the Indians were even more vicious against Negroes, more likely to rob them when they attempted to settle. Perhaps it was because they were easy victims, who hadn’t learned to defend themselves very well. Or perhaps it was because they tended to live isolated from a supportive community, like the one he had established in Whidbey, where folks came together to help one another in times of need.
He pulled the bodies together in one group, a gruesome task, reminding him of some of the things he had done in eastern Washington. The woods were wet from the constant drizzle and the fires he had seen the day before all but burned out, so a funeral pyre would be useless.
He began piling rocks and wood debris over the bodies to delay the depredation for a while and keep the birds away at least.
That took several hours, but it was only decent. And then he set out.
As he pushed his way back across the sound in the late afternoon, he thought about the irony of the massacre, that the victims had likely escaped somehow from a life of slavery only to find death and new captivity here in the Northwest from new oppressors. He wondered whether, if left alone, they might have made a go of it in this fertile land.
He was grateful for what God had given him and his family, grateful and relieved the weather had remained calm, allowing for a safe crossing—a good blessing in a dire situation. He would need to stop to rest at intervals over the nine hours it likely would take for him to cross against the tide and a mild southerly.
Caught, as he was, between hope and fear, he would need to watch for any activity that might indicate a ship that could carry him. Or a Northerner long boat that could catch up with him.
He would return with a militia detail to bury the settlers. When it was safe. But knowing somewhere out there was a long boat, likely with some new slaves, and more like it, moving down into the Puget Straits, he had to get home.
“Dear Jesus, Lord, give me the strength to endure this next travail. Let me see my porch and find my bed. Watch over the children and Emmy. I will do Thy will, but give me, Lord, this one last day.”
He said that same prayer over and over again as he paddled slowly across the sound.
Chapter Eight
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Emmy
We shucked fourteen bushels of winter corn, cut four more cords of Alder. Easier chopping than cedar. Received correspondence from Cmdr. G. Pickett, inquiring re: provisions Isersons visiting from Port Townsend in a few weeks. Bracing myself for that. Heard rumors that long boats seen off Camano. No word from Isaac. Worried.It is raining for the 6th straight day. No let up.
—Emmy Evers’ Diary, October 5th, 1857
Her duties filled the full day and much of the evening before it was too dark to do much else than sleep, bone tired, on a hard but sufficient mattress.
The big feather bed her father had sent them as a wedding gift never made it around the Horn. The clipper ship had been given up for lost. Other small amenities, sent by her family to them across the Rockies on the Oregon passage, were abandoned with many other things by Isaac’s brother, Winfield, in a horrible trek that nearly killed everyone in his party.
For that decision, she couldn’t criticize Winfield, an amiable but emotionally labile redheaded young man, because he had arrived with himself intact, in the company of Isaac’s father, Benjamin, Isaac’s feeble-minded, lame, older sister, Corinne; the Crocketts; the Mastersons; and five other families, all with little remaining in the way of possessions but determined to make their passage worth it.
The new settlers all had settled in quickly, making vigorous pursuit rebuilding their lives on Whidbey on, and in the near vicinity of the fertile plateau Isaac had surveyed and claimed in ’50. It was a splendid homestead, flat, with the richest soil they had ever seen and easy access to the beach.
Isaac had built an unadorned but ample house with a porch, cedar roof shingles and siding cut at the Bellingham mill. When the family had moved up from Olympia, the children had a bedroom upstairs next to theirs, and the kitchen, next to the small parlor, was large enough to accommodate six people for dinner.
Emmy was patient. She was also young enough that she understood Providence would provide for material comforts in due time, if she kept to her duties, loved her children, and obeyed her husband, although Isaac had made that very difficult many times.
Loving her children was the easiest thing God had given her to do in this life. Each day was new with them, and that was how they each embraced it as well, especially Sarah, who Emmy had decided
