After surveying areas like Lake Washington and Whidbey Island, Ebey energized that migration by writing effusive letters to friends and relatives, encouraging them to emigrate “before the good land is all taken.”
In 1852, possibly guided to Whidbey Island by Si’ahl, the man later to be known as Chief “Seattle,” Isaac Ebey re-established an abandoned claim on 640 acres of the fertile prairie now known as Ebey’s Plateau. There, he and his first wife, Rebecca, developed a prosperous farm that serviced the needs of the military and civilian populations in Bellingham and Port Townsend. After Rebecca died in 1854, Isaac remarried to a durable woman named Emily.
Ebey participated in the establishment of the territorial government in the southern area of Puget Sound and suggested the name “Olympia” for the Tumwater location that subsequently became the territorial capital. In his duties as a tax collector and regional magistrate, he traveled extensively and immediately understood the importance of San Juan Island as a strategic opportunity for the United States.
His exhortations to the territorial government recommending it move settlers onto San Juan Island helped the United States’ case for its claim to the island against Britain. Greatly disturbed by the constant threat of predation and conflict, in 1856 he outfitted a company of volunteers to fight in the Indian wars in Eastern Washington and was widely praised for his help in subduing native tribes.
The fatal cannonade by the U.S.S. Massachusetts on encamped natives at Port Gamble is thought to have provoked the attack on Ebey and his family and his brutal murder and beheading by Northerners prompted the settlers and military in the region to intensify their precautions, as well as their rationalization of the random lynching of numerous Native Americans. Sightings of long boats parading Ebey’s “tyee” (chieftan) head were reported for weeks afterwards.
Blockhouses still stand, preserved on Whidbey and San Juan Islands attesting to the very real threat of pillage, rape and murder by marauding “Northerners,” a term used for miscellaneous clans from indigenous regional native tribes. Although no one single group is likely responsible for the legendary headhunting and slaving, clans from the southern tip of Alaska, western British Columbia and the Queen Charlotte Islands (now called Haida Gwai) were blamed for most of the predation against white settlers and coastal native villages. Many tribes along the coast have stories of conflict with them.
Northerner slaving raids, which reputedly savaged the Pacific Coast all the way to northern California, continued until steam-powered vessels replaced many of the naval ships patrolling the region.
Collection of exquisite Haida Argillite carvings and coastal native artistry began in the late sixteenth century and continues to this day.
The Emmy Evers of Widow Walk is a composite character, derived from the readings of Emily Ebey’s diary as well as the reminiscences of many other strong-hearted pioneer women of that time — a time when most men believed that women had neither rights nor wherewithal.
Anah Nawitka is a composite character, drawn from accounts of several notorious clan leaders with whom the British and Americans contended in their appropriation of “aboriginal” lands.
Conflict between the cultures was inevitable, with ample provocation and rationalization for each side’s escalation of violent retributive actions. James Douglas, the aggressive and enterprising former Hudson’s Bay Company director and first governor of British Columbia, used the same tactics in taking land as had his British counterparts in taking New Zealand aboriginal land.
Isaac Stevens, the first Washington territorial Governor, advocated the “extinction” of Native Americans.
Antoine Bill and René Marté are composite characters of “Metís” - a mixed “breed” of French Canadian and indigenous native parentage, who participated in the exploration, trading, trapping and interpretative needs for the British and American explorers.
Ma’Nauita ‘sta, Jojo, and Ksi’ Amawal are composite characters of well-known, peaceful entrepreneurial native leaders in the British Columbia region.
Christian missionary work, particularly that of the Jesuits throughout the Pacific Northwest, is well documented. The character of Marano Levy is a fictionalized version of a legendary wandering Hebrew man who purportedly travelled the region looking for the lost tribes of Israel.
Captain George Edward Pickett, a West Point graduate and Mexican War hero, was stationed in Bellingham from 1855 to 1860. Ordered by Brigadier General William S. Harney to San Juan Island to pre-empt a British claim to that strategically important territory, Pickett made a show of it and subsequently was described by local journalists as a “fighting gamecock.”
His comments to the press purportedly were “Let ‘em come. We’ll make another bloody Bunker Hill of it.”
Pickett’s stubborn, well-publicized stand off intensified the confrontation, and for a short while there was wild speculation in the region that another war with the British was imminent. General Winfield Scott was dispatched by President James Buchanan to San Juan Island to de-escalate what was being called “The Pig War,” because the shooting of a Hudson’s Bay official’s pet pig by an American settler was the provocation used by Douglas to ostensibly “protect the rights of British citizens” on San Juan.
The dispute was finally settled in mediation by Kaiser Wilhelm in 1872.
At the outbreak of the U.S. Civil War, Pickett resigned his commission in the US Army and returned to his native Virginia to join the Confederate Army where he quickly achieved promotions, fame and notoriety. At Gettysburg, his division spearheaded the fateful march, now known as “Pickett’s Charge’” against a well-entrenched Union Army.
Major General George Pickett was described posthumously by one of his Union army adversaries, General George McClellan,as “the best fighting infantry commander on either side” of the War Between the States.
The Sunnyside Cemetery on Whidbey Island overlooks the farmstead owned by Isaac and Emmy. It contains the remains of Isaac and others in the Ebey family, as well as settlers who first farmed the fertile land. However, one story purports that the grisly scalp and skin mask from Isaac’s head was never returned to rest in that grave.
The site of the Ebey massacre remains much as it was in 1858 and many of the Whidbey
