Welcome Gypsy Souls!
Let us travel back in time, to the days of early settlements, homesteads, and a race for religion and for the races. I visited the site of The Prince’s Cabin in Southeastern Washington on one of my trips.
The Prince’s cabin is thought to be the oldest standing cabin in the state of Washington. It originally stood at a Cayuse wintering place just upstream of Marcus and Narcissa Whitman’s Presbyterian mission, two miles east of the Frenchtown Historic Site. Narcissa Whitman refers to its presence in a letter from January 1844, telling of the recent move by an immigrant family from the crowded mission building to “the Prince’s house up the river.” After the killing of the Whitmans in 1847, and during the ensuing war of 1855, the village site and the cabin were likely abandoned.
In 1855, the Cayuse, Walla Walla, and Umatilla Indian Tribes signed a treaty ceding more than 6.4 million acres of what is now northeastern Oregon and southeastern Washington to the United States, including the Frenchtown area. Although the treaty was ratified by Congress in 1859, the last Cayuse were not forced off the land in this area until early 1861, when white settlers demanded their removal, threatening to hang hostages if they stayed. In the same year, Albert and Elizabeth Blanchard laid claim to the property where the cabin still stood. The Homestead Act of 1862 officially opened the land up for settlement, and the Blanchards filed their land patent in Vancouver, Washington in 1866.
The land and cabin were acquired by the Smith family around 1888. While oral history indicates the cabin was moved from its original location “across water,” the first Government Land Office survey of the area in early 1860 notes a house on the precise spot where the cabin was located when Kriss and Robin Peterson purchased the property in 1990.
It was Robin Peterson who recognized the cabin as a fur trade relic and began the process of researching its origins and construction. In 2013, his widow Kriss Peterson donated the cabin to the Frenchtown Historical Foundation, to be moved, restored, and interpreted at the historic site.
The Cayuse name of the Prince was not recorded. “Prince” was often used in fur trade culture to refer to a headman or trading partner’s younger brother or son. The Prince was a younger brother of Hiyumtipin, headman at Pašx̣ápa (pronounced Pash-KA-pah), the Cayuse village just east of the Whitman Mission. It was Hiyumtipin who discovered the drowned body of young Alice Clarissa Whitman in the Walla Walla River in 1839. Hiyumtipin and the Prince were from the same extended family as Wilewmutkin (Old Joseph) and Wilewmutnin (Twisted Hair, who was Lewis and Clark’s Nez Perces Guide), as well as Young Chief (Tauitau), Looking Glass, Homlie, and others, all leaders in a regional indigenous political alliance.
Around 1834, Looking Glass of the Nez Perces, Young Chief of the Cayuse, and the Prince became involved in a dispute with Pierre Chrysologue Pambrun of the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) over prices for furs and horses. They allegedly seized Pambrun and interpreter Jean Toupin, threw blankets over them and beat them severely. In response to this incident, the HBC cut off trade with those involved, blacklisting all three leaders and their families.
When the three men returned to the HBC to seek reconciliation, Pambrun used “gift diplomacy” to resolve the conflict. Gift diplomacy was the common practice of offering gifts (typically European-style homes) in exchange for goods, horses, or promises of good behavior. It is documented that Pambrun built a cabin for Young Chief in or before 1840.
In fact, and in part because of the Prince’s involvement in this conflict, we believe Pambrun built at least two cabins: one for Young Chief on the Umatilla River, and one for the Prince at Pášx̣apa. It is not known if Looking Glass received a cabin.
Although there is no official record linking the Prince’s cabin to Pambrun, his connection to its construction is apparent through these and other pieces of evidence. The 1844 letter by Narcissa Whitman referencing “the Prince’s house up the river,” attests to the location and ownership of the Prince’s cabin. In addition, as discussed later, the cabin itself exhibits structural characteristics typical of the 1830s, and a level of construction skill specific to French-Canadian artisans of the time.
The Prince’s notoriety as a Cayuse leader waned in the years following the attack. During a council with Indian Agent Elijah White in 1843, the Prince is reported to have said:
“Perhaps you will say it is out of place for me to speak, because I am not a great chief. Once I had influence, but now I have but little…yet, I am from honorable stock. Promises which have been made to me and my fathers have not been fulfilled…But it will not answer for me to speak, for my people do not consider me their chief.”
Unfortunately, the Prince did not long enjoy the shelter of his cabin – he was slain by members of another tribe in about 1845, while en route to the buffalo country.
At the same site where The Prince’s Cabin now rests, was a burial marker and memorial garden for many pioneers and natives that had been in that area. The dates go as far back to the 1870’s.
