Source: The Third Age Part II Perspective On The Past By david cameron Last month's column featured Part I of an interview with Mukilteo pioneer Louisa Fowler Sinclair, whose young parents came over from Whidbey Island to the mainland at Point Elliot to operate the county's first store, hotel, saloon, and post office. Confinced by Morris H. Frost to leave Ebey's Landing and become his business partner, the two men created the only business center between Seattle and Penn's Cove on the island, where Coupeville now is located. With few eligible women and no other families nearby, lonesome loggers made the hotel a popular place and doted on young Louisa as she grew up. This is the continuation of the interview published in Voices of the Pioneers, a Depression-era collection of firsthand accounts of Washington's early years published as a WPA (Works Progress Administration - CC.) project under the direction of the secretary of state. Louisa continued; "One day while I was running the store, an Indian was knocked into a campfire during a fight near the store. His back was badly burned and he was in great pain. I wanted to help him and ran into the store to return with a bottle of Pain Killer, a liniment presumed to be good for bruises and rheumatism, but which, if applied to a cut or exposed sore would burn terribly. I felt lik a real angel of mercy as I emptied the whole bottle on the poor Indian's burned back, and for an hour he writhed in pain far greater than that caused ty the fire. Fortunately for me, he assumed that I had done the best thing possible for him, and when the pain had eased somewhat, he thanked me for saving his life. But, how my father laughted at me when he learned what I had done to soothe the poor fellow's pain! "My tather was the first postmaster at Mukilteo, and in the early days there was no other post office in Snohomish county. So all the mail for settlers up the river came to our office. There may have been a shedule, but if there were, it didn't mean much; for the mail often was a week later than we hoped for. Sometimes letters addressed to settlers up river lay in our office for weeks before being called for. But when a vessel called the 'Chehalis' began making regular trips up the Snohomish river, its captain used to pick up mail for settlers he knew and carry it to the nearest point he could reach. "One article of commerce that was always acceptable was feathers, for making pillows and bed tick. As the country settled, there was a good demand for them, and father bought all he could get from the Indians, who killed ducks then as much for their feathers as for food. They were usually brought in bales, and were not closely inspected. So after a time the Indians began to put into the balses almost ny foreign substance they could pick up- pieces of rope, grass and ferns, etc. "Our store was filled with flying feathers one day when, after having had complaints about poor quality feathers, father insisted on inspecting one bale brought in by an Indian. It proved to be less than one-half feathers, the remainder being a bonbination of all sorts of junk. The Indian was so enraged that he kicked the opened bundly fiercely, and the feathers flew in all directions, settleing down all over the store. 'The Indian then insisted that father must pay for the feathers, even if he rejected the other stuff, and father told him if he would gather up all the feathers and bale them, he'd pay. But it was too much of a job for the Indian, and he left. It was weeks before the feathers were brushed out of our stock and swept out of doors. "Another water fowl, the brandt,which, though edible, was not considered as good for food as the mallard ducks, was often caught in fishing seines. The brandt would settle by thousands on the Sound at a point where the tide met the outflow of the Snohomish river. The Indians, in canoes, would surround a flock of them and throw their fishing nets over the flock. The brandt could stick their heads through the net but could not spread their wings to fly. By drawing in the seine the Inians easity caught and killed them. "Mukilteo had the first fish cannery on Puget Spund. At first the salmon were either salted and packed in casks or were smoked and packed for shipment. And they were well smoked, too. Smoked until the meat shrank to resemble the present-day chipped beef - not merely colored a little as is done today. It was far more delicious, too. "Later Mr. George Myers came here and started a real cannery, packing the salmon in tin cans as is done today. In his factory I got my first job at regular wates. I was taught to do the soldering that father was using the only available kerosene lamp in our house, and I could not get close enought to it to read, I resolved to have a lamp of my own. The next day, during the lunchy hour at the cannery, I made a lamp bowl of two bright new sin salmon cans, soldering them together and screwing into the top a new brass burner from my father's stock. With small shells and bright pebbles, and some green paint, I made it a very handsome and useful lamp - so good, in fact, that father almost adopted it for his own. "I can remember a time when I was very small when we had not even a kerosene lamp, when we had only a tin vessel very much like a tea kettle, with two spouts from which wicks protruded. Fish oil - made from the livers of dogfish - was the illuminant, and very smelly it was. Not only that, but the tip of each flame there wavered constantly a streamer of black, oily smoke which, in time covered the entire ceiling." Both fish oil and the Fowler family are gone, but the pear tree planted probably the year after Louisa was born in 1862 still remains at the foot of Park Ave. just above the railroad tracks cutting the street off from the waterfront. On a recent day it was blooming well, although the broken trunk is only a portion of the original tree. A Mukilteo maintenance worker from the shop across the street noted its pears are smaller than an orange and ripen slowly. "Probably a winter pear, " he observed. Crows and the public still harvest them, providing an ongoing continuity with our past. When if finally dies, the city plans on replacing the tree from cuttings taken six years ago and bein raised by an arborist on Whidbey Island. * * * 30 * * * Carroll in Snohomish