AMONG THE PRESSING NEEDS of Spokane Falls, somewhat woefully admitted at earlier sessions of the California House fireside forum when too many strangers were not present, were educational and religious facilities for the white population. It was also admitted that the town needed a newspaper. It could not indefinitely depend on Walla Walla to spread the news of what the Falls had to offer.
When a Tacoma editor on an exploring trip turned up at the California House some three months after it was opened he met with a hearty welcome. His explorations a-horseback, said Francis H. Cook, had convinced him that the still mirage-like Northern Pacific railroad would have to traverse the Spokane valley and in all likelihood would touch at the Falls. This statement, plus Cook’s personal acquaintanceship with officials of the Northern Pacific, was enough for Jim Glover. He promptly offered a piece of land as a gift if the visitor would establish a local newspaper, and the editor, always ripe for a new venture, promptly accepted.
So it was that Spokane Falls acquired its first newspaper. Incidentally, it also acquired new publicity west of the mountains, for Cook continued to publish his Tacoma paper, in which henceforward he consistently boosted the home of his east-of-the-Cascades journalistic enterprise. The name he gave to his new venture was The Spokan Times. The final “e” was omitted from the place name, he said, because the word should be spelled as properly pronounced. Of course there were varied spellings from which to choose—all the way from “Spokein,” the form used by the early missionary explorer Samuel Parker, who averred that was the way the Indians pronounced it, to “Spokain” and “Spoken” found in isolated instances. It was beside the point that Governor Stevens and Captain John Mullan had set it down as “Spokane,” following the usage in an 1838 War Department map. The United States Post Office now favored “Spokan Falls” and the editor was ready to follow suit. Newcomers would be helped to free their tongues of the unfortunate “cane” pronunciation with which so many arrived.
Getting out the first issue (April 24, 1879) was a problem. It was printed in Colfax and hauled the fifty-odd miles to Spokane Falls over roads unspeakably bad. The trip took six days, and the freighter reported on arrival that teams and wagons had mired thirty-three times en route. There was every reason for Spokane Falls to hail the four-page weekly as a real event.
By July fourth many of the initial difficulties had been over-come, and the editor put out a gala edition devoted to the local scene. Persons who had seen the town a year earlier, said he, would be amazed at its growth from seven to thirty-five families; one store to six; one sawmill and one boarding house to one flour mill, one sawmill, a blacksmith shop, two livery stables, a carpenter shop, a brewery, and three saloons. In the news columns, mention was made of a crew of surveyors on Lake Creek and the fence war in progress there between stockmen and farmers. The community was informed that a Chinese wash-house was soon to be established, and that the ferry above town “now required the presence of a man at all times.” The arrival of Messrs. Cannon, Warner & Company’s large new safe, the first in Spokane Falls, was given due notice; there would be preaching at the schoolhouse Sunday at eleven; Evans and Dobson, proprietors of the furniture store, “make undertaking a specialty”; the schoolhouse at Spangle now housed forty-five pupils.
The advertising columns of the Spokan Times are of quite as much interest today as they were to the first subscribers. Board at the California House is five dollars per week; “Buchu,” one dollar a bottle or six bottles for five dollars, “invigorates the stomach” and is “good for almost everything”; the Aldine Art Journal of America is sold by subscription only through San Francisco Distributors; textbooks and maps are available through J. K. Gill of Portland, Oregon; the University of Washington Territory offers exceptional educational opportunities; finally, James A. Glover has land for sale near the route of the Northern Pacific railway—an item running to half-column length.
In the field of journalism, Spokane Falls’ lack had obviously been met. Momentous events were also taking place in the field of religion. Only a month after the Times had become a reality, the First Congregational Church{71} was organized in the Cowley parlor, thus helping to relieve the concern of fathers and mothers and others religiously inclined lest Spokane Falls grow up to be a Godless community. The Methodists were not far behind, if indeed they were behind at all. Presiding Elder Havermale, who had earlier purchased the island in the river as a site for a school, had preached the first sermon delivered in the Falls to a white congregation, and had begun to conduct a Methodist Episcopal class at about the time the Congregational church got under way. Priority claims aside, it is at least certain that before the year 1879 had passed, there was a Methodist church in Spokane Falls, this too helping to remove the threat of Godlessness. Baptist, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, and other Protestant groups organized shortly, and a Catholic church also came into being. From being underchurched, Spokane Falls soon threatened to be overchurched. Crosses and steeples blossomed on strategic lots, and along with them in several instances came schools with church affiliations.
Meantime, what of public education? The village of Spokane Falls, it will be remembered, was located in wide-spreading Stevens County. In 1872, School District No. 8 was organized in the county, a district charted as “commencing at the mouth of Hangman Creek, following up the creek to the Idaho line; thence north along said line to Spokane River; thence to place of beginning.” As already set forth,{72} missionary Henry T. Cowley, Cyrus Yeaton and L. S. Swift had held an election in which they became the directors of the district; Cowley was chosen as teacher; and soon the first public school was meeting in his home.
For several years the school led a precarious existence. Enrollment fluctuated, there was no schoolhouse. In spite of growing public clamor for a building, it was not until 1878 that one was finally achieved, and then with extreme difficulty, for two cogent reasons. First, Washington was not yet a state, and consequently the two sections of land set aside in each township as “school sections” could not be converted into cash. As a result, public schools had to be wholly supported through taxation. The second difficulty grew out of the fact that in far-flung District No. 8, many owners of taxable property were bachelors. Why, they asked, should they be taxed to educate other people’s children?
At the height of the struggle, J. J. Browne, real estate promoter and ex-county superintendent of schools in Oregon, was prevailed upon to address the assembled voters. He proved so persuasive that a ten mill tax was levied. The law required twenty thousand dollars’ worth of taxable property in a district, and it was found that District No. 8 lacked five hundred and fifty dollars of reaching that sum. This mired the entire program until the problem was solved by Browne himself. “Give in five hundred and fifty dollars’ worth of personal property in my name,” he wrote the authorities of Stevens County, “and I will pay the taxes on it.” The county officials took the necessary steps, and with tax money and additional funds accruing from such affairs as the ball where Clara Smiley Gray danced the first waltz, the first public school building came into existence and was provided with essentials. The little structure was barnlike, and the essentials consisted of a wood stove, a kitchen table whereat “teacher” could preside with bell and ruler, and handmade desks of crude design. Cheerless and uncomfortable, it was nevertheless prized by the little village in proportion to the effort and financial strain it represented.
For several short terms, various teachers reigned in Spokane’s first public school building. Growth in enrollment was far from spectacular, but when in 1879 Spokane County was cut off from Stevens and J. J. Browne became superintendent of schools, he could report that, in the spring, enrollment in District No. 8 had reached twenty-two. September of the same year found The Times reporting favorably on the educational situation:
School was opened last Monday by Captain Tobias, who speaks very flatteringly of his pupils. We are pleased to learn that the Captain is favorably impressed with his school. He is the right man in the right place. He has fifteen years’ experience in the schoolroom.
Right man or not, the Captain did not long remain. The following year found two male teachers in charge in the tiny building, now provided with a partition separating the lower grades from the upper.
When in 1882 Miss Mattie Hyde arrived straight from the Oshkosh, Wisconsin, State Normal School to take charge of the upper grades for six months, the situation was enough to chill the most dauntless instructor. Miss Mattie’s room was separated from that occupied by the lower grades only by the flimsiest of board partitions, completely inadequate to shut out noise, and shutting out the view only if there were no curious eyes at knotholes or cracks. The outer walls were by no means weatherproof. Built of green lumber, they were now full of chinks that on a windy day in winter would surely admit chilling blasts with which the wood stove could not cope. Even more disconcerting than the prospect of physical discomfort was what Miss Mattie learned about her pupils: two were pals of the bibulous Hank Vaughn and occupied themselves at night dealing faro bank. The advice casually offered by the county superintendent did nothing to allay her trepidation: “Oh, just run the school as you would anywhere else,” he had said, dismissing the matter with a wave of the hand.
The California House forum doubtless questioned Miss Mattie’s ability to hold down her job. Her predecessors, mostly men, had had their hands full in spite of their sex and experience. The new teacher would need all her courage.
Miss Mattie did not feel very courageous when she confronted her flock the first morning. However, she was soon too busy sorting out ages and sizes to think of much else. Her forty pupils, she found, ranged from twenty-two years down to twelve or fourteen. Several were of a type to inspire dismay. In addition to the two faro dealers, there was the sharp-eyed young chap who had ridden pony express from the age of fifteen, covering lonely trails revolver in hand. Another pupil came with a note from Red-Handed Mike, whose reputation as a bad man was well established. The note set forth that the bearer was part Indian and made it clear that anyone who set out to bully the half-breed boy would have Mike himself to deal with. At the other end of the social scale was a little bevy of nice girls, fluttery and ladylike. Privately, Miss Mattie thought they might stand more in need of a protector than Mike’s half-breed.
But when the schoolroom settled down to work there was little trouble aside from the noise from the lower grades beyond the partition. After all, Miss Mattie’s assorted masculine Wild Westerners were gentlemen at heart and they wanted to learn. Their teacher was obviously a lady, and no young buckaroo was going to pitch a lady out the window. The faro dealers became star pupils, though when and where they managed to study was beyond Miss Mattie’s comprehension. When she firmly announced “No smoking on the school grounds,” the male members of her flock marked the boundaries with big rocks and obligingly stepped out of bounds when indulging in pipe or cigar. Sometimes younger ones engaged in fist fights with members of the recently organized and near-by Episcopal school for boys known as the Rodney Morris School. However, word sent by Miss Mattie to Charles Albert Absolom, headmaster and sole instructor, put a sudden end to such encounters. The manly use of gloves, he announced, was encouraged at Rodney Morris, but on a strictly intramural basis.
On errands after school, Mattie Hyde hurried with downcast eyes past saloons and certain unpleasant-appearing shacks with drawn shades, and noted with dismay the playing cards strewn about streets and vacant lots. The answers to her questions revealed that it was the custom of losing gamblers to discard the old deck and start with a new one in hope of a change in luck. Ruefully, she had to admit that the town had its shady side—more of it than she liked to think about. But this did not extend to the school, and for that she was grateful.
Miss Mattie’s second year was more physically comfortable than her first, for by that time Spokane Falls had grown sufficiently to achieve a new four-room frame building on the site of the present Lewis and Clark high school. There was also a considerable increase in the staff; the town at last had launched on the program of public educational expansion and improvement concerning which it has never ceased to be proud.
In spite of improved conditions, Miss Mattie Hyde’s name soon disappeared from the district payroll. Whether the modest display of her black-stockinged feet—extended for fitting with a pair of high, buttoned shoes in John B. Blalock’s shoe store—led to romance is a matter of conjecture. At all events, School District No. 8 had to seek another teacher. Miss Hyde had become Mrs. Blalock.
Charles Albert Absolom of the Rodney Morris School also faded from the educational scene in time, but never from the memory of his pupils. According to the hotel forum, the manner of his arrival in town was not in line with his subsequent performance. Or was it? The English were known to be great walkers, so perhaps it was like a graduate of Cambridge University to appear in Spokane Falls on foot ahead of the stage in a snowstorm. Probably he was one of those younger sons you read about in the storybooks, and not infrequently found in the Northwest. His clothes looked like it; Bond Street without doubt. Witness the togs he donned for his jaunts with dogs and gun on a holiday, and the “flannels” he wore for sporting events! Said he had been a number one at cricket, a crack shot, too. And the way he trained those boys! No swearing, no soiled shirts, no one-suspender hitches. The school had regular boxing classes. If a pair of boys got into a scrap, on with the gloves and fight it out like gentlemen, with Absolom as referee.
Small wonder the annual school parade was a headline event. In front strode the headmaster wearing a top hat, frock coat, white waistcoat, pearl-gray trousers, spats, lemon-colored kid gloves—a nine days’ wonder as, twirling his malacca stick, he marshaled his band of scrubbed, brushed, and shined young pupils on Howard street. Occasional ribald remarks on the part of male onlookers were offset by the observations of the ladies lining the board sidewalks. Charles Albert Absolom might indeed look like a haberdasher’s model, but why not? It wouldn’t hurt the general run of men in Spokane Falls a bit to pay more attention to dress. Young Dr. Pittwood, whose forceps had already deftly removed many an aching molar, was to be commended for having defended with his fists the right of a professional gentleman to wear a plug hat. And it did no harm to instill manners into the coming generation; some of those boys would grow up to thank Absolom for what he had taught them. As for the headmaster himself, well, it was strange that a teacher of his stamp should choose a little out-of-the-way town in the Northwest. Like enough there was an unfortunate love affair in the background. Lots of folks came west to forget.
Not until a good many years after the Rodney Morris School for Boys had come to an end for lack of funds and its polished headmaster had left the Falls to embark on a jungle expedition in Brazil did speculation concerning him lapse into the limbo of unsolved and apparently insoluble mysteries.
To the satisfaction of the town, educational institutions ambitious to provide the Inland Empire with instruction at the collegiate level began to appear in the eighties. Havermale College had never come into being. But in 1882 a Methodist minister arrived from California with his family, and the news went round that the Reverend Isaac Chase Libby and wife had been sent by the Columbia River Conference to establish a college. When organized, it would be known as Spokane College, and the Reverend Mr. Libby would act as president. To begin with, he and Mrs. Libby would constitute the entire faculty, for both the college and a preparatory school were obviously essential. For full measure, the president of Spokane College would also serve as pastor of the Methodist church.
Neither campus nor college building was in sight when the Libbys arrived. But Colonel David P. Jenkins, busily at work helping Spokane Falls expand across the river to the north, solved the problem of a site with a gift of twenty-two acres of bunchgrass in the general neighborhood of the present Spokane County courthouse. Public subscriptions, plus funds available from the parent Methodist Episcopal organization, provided the money for a single building soon under way on the north-side campus. Meanwhile the Libbys conducted a school in the Methodist church and the shack they had rented as a home. When at length they could transfer their educational work to the north side and students began daily to cross the flimsy wooden bridge, Spokane Falls congratulated itself. It could now boast of a college definitely in operation.
Actually, the institution was at first little more than a secondary school with a grade school attached. In time, however, the college reached an enrollment approaching two hundred, acquired a faculty of nine, and offered a collegiate curriculum including scientific courses using an excellent scientific laboratory. Yet financial support was never adequate and there was too much competition. A privately financed academy at Cheney developed into Washington’s first tax-supported normal school. Some sixty miles to the south, the doors of the State Agricultural College at Pullman opened invitingly. Across the line in Moscow the University of Idaho beckoned. In Walla Walla there was Whitman; on the coast, Washington’s own University. In the end, Spokane College suffered the fate of many another small Western college and went under, but not before it had been incorporated into the University of Spokane Falls. The latter was an ambitious undertaking, listed in the 1890 city directory as embracing schools of law, medicine, theology, and education, as well as a conservatory of music and a college of commerce. It was a pet project of Colonel Jenkins, who gave so liberally that it came generally to be known as Jenkins University (or Institute). A good deal of the experiment never got beyond the paper stage, and when the project collapsed, Spokane College went with it.
The tale of Spokane Falls’ Catholic college, ultimately to outshine all others, provides a fitting close to the story of the decade when Spokane first attained educational importance. The tale may well have started at the California House where so many other projects were mulled over and sometimes finally decided. Among the guests not infrequently registered there was Father Joseph M. Cataldo, S.J., missionary to the Indians of the Pacific Northwest. The Falls had been grateful for his beneficent influence over the red men at the time of the threatened uprising in the seventies. He was known to be particularly loved and respected by the Nez Percés and Coeur d’Alenes from whom he had won the name “Kuailks Metatcopun” (Black-Robes-Three-Times-Broken), because of having three times suffered from fractures.
Father Cataldo was an excellent storyteller and it is not beyond reason to imagine that he may have reminisced to an appreciative audience around the California House stove on his early missionary efforts. In such case, he might have explained that to the Spokanes he had not become as well known as to their neighbor tribes, for the reason that when he had first visited them in the sixties they were too busy fishing salmon to listen to religion. However, Baptiste Peone had suggested that he come again, preferably in the month of November. Baptiste, as the Good Father smilingly put it, was “one who came in quarters,” in other words, a quarter-breed. He had a home on a prairie northwest of the Falls, was a convert to the Catholic faith, could say part of “Our Father who art in Heaven,” and wanted to learn the rest of it.{73}
Had Father Cataldo acted on Peone’s suggestion? The fireside circle at the California House would certainly have wanted the rest of the story. Thereupon, eyes twinkling, the good Father would in all likelihood have launched forth, as he loved to do in later years, on the tale of what happened further on Peone Prairie.
Yes, he had returned according to Peone’s suggestion. But this time many of the Indians were away on a buffalo hunt and head chief Garry was also away. No building of any sort might be erected in Garry’s absence, reported Baptiste.
Not even a tent on Baptiste’s own property? asked Cataldo.
Baptiste pondered. Well, yes. That might be all right for the present, and on second thought perhaps the old chief temporarily in charge might even allow a little cabin to be put up in which Father Cataldo could live and teach until Garry’s return, four months hence.
Conference with the old chief proved that he was willing, a tiny log cabin chinked with mud was erected, and in this combined dwelling and chapel the mission got under way.
The Indians were taught prayers, songs, and “some religion.” For the oldsters there was set up a night school. At the end of three and a half months, one hundred Indians had been baptized and fifty-five had made their first communion; but in two weeks it would be necessary to leave if Spokane Garry so ordered. When Baptiste was reminded of this fact he decided to call the tribe together after mass on the last day before Garry’s return.
“Kuailks Metatcopun,” he said, “look behind the door.”
Father Cataldo looked. “Nobody there,” he reported.
“Look again.” But still there was nobody there.
“Look sharp,” persisted Baptiste.
Father Cataldo was puzzled. “What is the meaning of all this?” he asked.
Baptiste’s answer was both disappointed and imperative.
“You didn’t look sharp. There is someone there.”
Father Cataldo was now thinking hard. “I can guess,” he hazarded, “but I cannot see him.”
“Good!” announced Baptiste. “You guess right. It is the devil. When you go away, he comes back to destroy what you have done. You must stay.”{74}
One can see Father Cataldo ending his story with a reminiscent smile. He had promised to return if permitted, and did so a short time after the following Easter. Thus Spokane’s St. Michael’s Mission to the Upper Spokanes got under way. The mission persisted and grew in spite of Chief Garry’s efforts to counteract its influence by holding Protestant services of his own, and in spite of the fact that Father Cataldo was unable to remain there personally. Other Fathers took over and Cataldo returned to his work in Idaho and Montana, and finally to his post as Supervisor General of the entire Rocky Mountain Mission.
What was he doing in Spokane Falls now? Well, in the first place he was here to purchase a small lot for a Catholic church to serve the local white population. However, there was something else in the back of his mind. Undoubtedly, the town needed better educational facilities. When the railroad arrived, as it was bound to do soon, Spokane Falls should become an important educational center, including among its schools one sponsored by the Catholic church. He was going to see what he could do about that. In the beginning, such a school might be devoted to the education of Indian children from neighboring reservations. But if the city grew, and he was sure it would outdistance the much-boosted neighboring settlement at Cheney, the school could be enlarged to take care of white students. A site on the north side of the river above the falls seemed advisable. There was plenty of unoccupied land over there, and it would be only some six miles or so from the Peone Prairie mission.{75} The two institutions could easily collaborate. Would the citizens of Spokane Falls be willing to contribute to such an enterprise?
They were. With what they gave to supplement the funds available through the Jesuit society which Father Cataldo represented, he was able in 1881 to purchase from the Northern Pacific railroad at slight expense three hundred and twenty acres of mingled rocks and pines bordering the river. Once in possession, he refused to sell off any considerable portion, though why he wanted to keep the entire three hundred and twenty unpromising acres few could see. His “rock pile” was the subject of good-natured joking.
The jokes left Father Cataldo unperturbed. Within three years the scoffers found themselves-, contributing to a fund with which to build on the north-side property a small church edifice of wood and a simple frame structure to house a school for boys to be called Gonzaga. It was not, however, until September seventh, 1887, that the school was formally opened with an enrollment of eighteen students who were to engage in a “solid classical education,” based on the principles of religion, but including on the secular side penmanship and bookkeeping.
Thus was born what is now Gonzaga University. Its financial stability was aided over the years by the judicious sale of residential property from the founder’s “rock pile.” Beginning in 1912 with the founding of the law school, there have been added such schools as education, nursing, business administration, engineering. Today’s curriculum still emphasizes the “solid” aspects of education. But the eighteen hundred students passing from one or another of Gonzaga’s sturdy brick structures to green playfields, concrete tennis courts, and stadium or into the reverent silence of the twin-spired church of Saint Aloysius look back with awe at the rugged schedule of the first eighteen. They arose at five-thirty in the morning; and when cold weather froze the pump, helped chop holes in the ice and fetched in buckets of river water for the kitchen and for personal ablutions.
Times have changed. Father Cataldo’s rock pile has been transformed. The years have justified his faith.