Indians are friendly, but a dangerous crossing at Snake River for future Mrs. Rounds.

My name is Betty Rounds. I was born in San Sabi County, Texas, on a cotton plantation owned by my folks. I can dimly remember the cotton gin in a nearby town where all our cotton was taken. My parents were Mr. and Mrs. William Bible.

I was always a sickly child and our family doctor, Dr. Hannock, advised a change of climate for my health. In 1882 when I was five years my parents, a sister, two brothers, and I started with a wagon train of forty wagons for the Oregon Country over the Old Oregon Trail. I was in bed during all this long trip but I can vividly recall some of the things told to me by my mother.

We started from Texas sometime in the early spring and it took us four months to make the trip. We had a horse and a mule to pull our covered wagon, but many of the wagons were pulled by oxen. Our route lay across the Texas plains, over many high mountains, and across deep rivers. We came upon many heaps of household provisions that had been abandoned by previous wayfarers. We soon realized the necessity of this when we also had to leave some of our cherished keepsakes beside the trail. Many were the times we looked over these abandoned provisions and exchanged some of ours for something better.

We had one Indian scare on the way up here. We saw a band of Indians on horseback galloping towards us across the plains so all the wagons immediately circled and the extra livestock was driven into the enclosure. Guards were posted and most of the men lay down under the wagons. The Indians were friendly and no fight followed.

The chief items of diet were buffalo meat and bread cooked in a Dutch oven. Cooking was done over a fire of buffalo chips. There were large herds of buffalo along the trail and the hunters would pick out a fat cow and the meat would be divided among the families of the wagon train. We would travel a week or so until our horses gave out and then stop and rest them for two or three days. During this time the women would do the washing that had accumulated. They would make a bed for me by taking the spring seat from the wagon and putting a blanket on it. My toys were bright pieces of quilt patches.

Many children died during this hard journey and whenever a grave was left the immigrants would run all the wagons of the train over them so the Indians could not find the freshly made mounds.

When the wagons crossed the Snake River they just had to plunge in and cross. The water came into the wagons and after the crossing had been successfully made all the clothes had to be unpacked and dried. The loose cattle and horses were forced into the water to swim across. When we reached Baker, father bought all the children shoes but me and I cried. He said that I couldn’t wear them as I was in bed but I said I would so he went out and got me a pair of shoes and I sat up all afternoon admiring those new shoes. In a few days I was up and running and playing. I gained weight steadily and have enjoyed the best of health since coming to Oregon.

My father left us at Pilot Rock to work on a she ranch and that winter he contracted pneumonia and died. My mother, sister, two brothers and I came to Fox where we spent the winter. We lived in a cabin on the place where Hiatts now live. We lived mostly on bread and a gallon of milk that a neighbor lady gave us each day. My mother took in washings that winter.

We went to school for three months in the summer and were taught readin’ and ‘ritin’ and ‘rithmetic. Our teacher was some lady that lived there and our school house was a log cabin that still stands in the cemetery there. We had slates on which to do most of our school work. One pencil and tablet lasted us all one year. They were very precious to us. The school kids teased us because all we had to eat for lunch was a couple of dry biscuits.

Mother married Mr. Starrett and we moved to his sheep ranch down below Monument in the Cottonwood country. The greater part of my time was spent herding sheep. I remember once I stepped in a badger hole and could not get my leg out and my stepfather had to come and dig me out. I would chase the lambs when they banded up and wandered off till I was tired out. If I had left them alone they would have come back by themselves.

My stepfather told us that he was herding sheep in Fox Valley when the Indians came through burning out many of the ranches. Someone got word to them that the Indians were coming so he left his sheep in the charge of an old dog named Rover and came to the fort at Long Creek which was situated on Herbert Martin’s place. They were at the fort for some time and when he went back to Fox Valley all his sheep were there, banded up just as if he had been there to keep watch. Rover had killed a couple of pigs to eat but would not kill a sheep. They found one man in Fox who had evidently been eating his lunch when some Indians found him, tortured and scalped him. When they scalped him they took a strip of hide across the top of his head form ear to ear, including both ears.

Then I married Mr. Rounds. We lived on a ranch on Cottonwood. Later we moved to a ranch about six miles out of Long Creek. It was while we were living there that Long Creek burned. Ross and Bertha Kahler had come down to cook for the Monumental Hotel during the Fourth of July celebration. Sherm and Beulsh were playing with matches in the bedroom of the Monumental Hotel and before they knew it the whole place was in afire. This was on the third day of July, 1909. We saw the flames from our ranch and drove in.

Shortly after Long Creek was rebuilt we moved into town and rented the hotel. Later we bought it. The lumber for rebuilding Long Creek came from Joe Seach’s place in Round Basin.

One of the yearly events at Long Creek was the three or four days of races. People came form all over and brought their racehorses. Dances, fights, and gambling held sway during these days. I have fed as many as two hundred people in my hotel dining room on one of these race days. People came in by coach and in their own buggies.

Long Creek was the beginning of the main coach line to John Day and on to Prairie City. Woolenbergs owned the line and the coaches were pulled by four-horse teams. Coaches and horses were always kept as spotlessly clean as possible in such a country and at such a time. It took from early in he mourning until six at night to go to Prairie City via this coach line. Woolenbergs’ daughter still runs Blue Mountain Stages, an outgrowth of the old coach line.

Ralph Van Biber from Monument owned the first car in the country. My brother-in-law, Miriam Rounds, was the second proud owner of a car. In those days a car created quite a bit of excitement. If I was milking the cows and heard a car I would almost break my neck getting outside where I could watch it go by on the road. In those days cars the cars had no tops and compared to the cars of this day and age would look much like a freak. I think one of the most thrilling experiences I can ever remember having was when my brother-in-law came and took us all over to John Day one Sunday for a joy ride. Of coarse the roads were rough, and the car did not have good springs but we thought we were riding in he height of luxury.

The country right around Long Creek has not changed much since I came here except that farms have grown up here and there. The trees never grew down any further than they do now. Of coarse the trees have been thinned out a lot by continuos lumbering. Many of the older families of Grant County were here then. Among them were the Carters, Criswells, Blackwells, and the Harpers.

It has now been 24 years since we bought this hotel and many and varied are the people who have crossed the threshold. I am now 65 years old and feel I have lived an interesting life in that era generally termed “the good old days.”

– Phyllis Rusque , from the 1942-1943 Long Creek Mountaineers annual