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A strong military force had penetrated the Indian country the upper Puyallup valley and beyond. We knew of this, but did not know that the soldiers had retreated by another road, virtually driven out, the very day we went in armed with all sorts of guns and with scarcely any organization. We had gone into the Indian stronghold not to fight Indians, but to recover property.

The business was well started by the time of my father's death in 1869, and in the fifteen years following the acreage planted to hops was increased until the crop-yield of 1882, a yield of more than seventy-one tons, gave the Puyallup valley the banner crop, as to quantity, of the United States and, some persons asserted, of the world.

The tribes residing in Washington Territory are the Nisqually, Puyallup, and other confederate tribes; the D'Wamish and other allied bands; the Makahs, the S'Klallams, the Qui-nai-elts and Qui-leh-utes, the Yakamas, the Chehalis and other allied tribes, and the Colville, Spokanes, Coeur d'Alênes, Okanagans, and others. Nisqually, Puyallup, and others.

The journey back over the old Oregon Trail by ox team was made during my seventy-seventh year. On January 29, 1906, I left my home in Puyallup, Washington, and on November 29, 1907, just twenty-two months later to the day, I reached Washington, our national capital, with my cattle and my old prairie schooner.

The public, generally, gave me the credit of introducing hop culture into the Northwest. Therefore it seems fitting to tell here the story of the beginnings of an industry that came to have great importance. In March of 1865, Charles Wood of Olympia sent about three pecks of hop roots to Steilacoom for my father, Jacob R. Meeker, who then lived on his claim in the Puyallup valley.

Nina Jolidon Croake of Tacoma, 1900-1902, elected at the Seattle convention; Dr. Luema Greene Johnson of Tacoma, 1902-1904, elected at the Tacoma convention; Dr. Fannie Leake Cummings of Seattle, 1904-1906, elected at a meeting in Puyallup at which only five persons were present, the small suffrage club here being the only one surviving in the State. Dr. Cummings, aided by Mrs.

With a fifty-pound flour sack filled with hard bread, or navy biscuit, a small piece of dried venison, a couple of pounds of cheese, a tin cup, and half of a three-point blanket, all made into a pack of less than forty pounds, I climbed the hill at Steilacoom and took the road leading to Puyallup.

John V. Meeker, my brother, passed by my cabin when he carried the sack of roots on his back from Steilacoom to my father's home, a distance of about twenty miles, and from the sack I took roots enough to plant six hills of hops. As far as I know those were the first hops planted in the Puyallup valley.

Finally, during the failure of the world's hop crop in the year 1882, there came to be unheard-of prices for hops, and fully one third of the crop of the Puyallup valley was sold for a dollar a pound. I had that year nearly one hundred thousand pounds, which brought an average of seventy cents a pound. My first hop house was built in 1868 a log house. It still stands in Pioneer Park in Puyallup.

During the stay at Steilacoom in the time of the Indian troubles, we had begun a trading venture, in a small way. The venture having proved successful, we invested all our savings in a new stock of merchandise, and this stock, not all paid for, went down with the ship. Again we must start in life, and we moved to a new location, a homestead in the Puyallup valley.