The Progress., 1888-02-18
A Dark Skinned Huntress.

While at Chewela recently I met
Nancy Mckenzie, a noted half
breed woman, who is known
throughout the far Northwest,
from Montana to Puget sound.
She lives in little log cabin in
one one of those fertile little val.
leys which abound in the mount.
ainous districts of Washington
Territory, on the Chil-charl-a.
mouse. Nancy, as she is familiarly
known, is a large-framed, tall
woman, about sixty years Of age,
who takes more aftsr her Indian
mother than her Scotch father,
who, as an enlisted man in the
service Of the Hudson Bay compa.
ny, left his home in the Orkney
islands about seventy-fve years
ago and sought wealth and adven-
ture in the untrodden and un-
known regions of the Northwest,
where his employers, the Hudson
Bay company, were seeking to
establish trading posts and gain a
foothold in the name of the Brit
ish crown in territory that John
Jacob Astor was trying to gain
possession of as feeder for his
newly established fort, Astoria, at
the mouth of the Columbia river.
He was one Of those wild and dar-
ing men, the records of whose
prowess are only preserved in the
oft-told legends of the past that
are narrated and listened to by
half-clothed savages around their
winter camp fires. He married
an Indian woman and lost all de-
sire to leave the wild home and as
sociates with whom circumstances
had thrown him. It is more than
even limited that he joined the
sayages in their first wars with
the whites, and that more than
once his hand was red with the
blood of his fellow-countrymen,
whose lonely cabin he had with
his savages fred with the midnight
torch.
Be this as it may, Nancy grew
to womanhood under his tutelage
and around his camp fire, follow
ing him in his migrations from
the buffalo hunting grounds of
Montana to the Salmon creeks
that empty their waters into the
great Columbia, and to Puget
sound, where the wandering tribes
of savages would congregate at
certain seasons. In her younger
days she must doubtless have been
model for the sculptor in physic-
al development, for though aged
and wrinkled she is still nearly
six feet in height and straight as
the typical Indian, with strong
and deeply penciled features. .
Notwithstanding her sex she
became noted marksman and
hunter, which characteristics dis
tinguish her to this day. She was
married young, as is the custom
among Indians of her mothers
tribe, to a Scotchman, who, like
her father belonged to the Hudson
Bay company, and after buffeting
with the tide of emigration which
had begun to plough across the
Rocky mountains and up from
California they settled in the val
ley where she now lives alone and
unfriended save by the wandering
bands of Indians, who never pass
her cabin by. She is widow,
her husband, Patrick Mckenzie,
having died of consumption a few
years since, and is the last repre-
sentative of her race, as her nu-
merous progeny have all died.
Nancy still clings to the habits
of her youth, and may be seen ey-
cry day riding astride her tough
cayuse pony, driving her small
band Of horses and cattle to the
ranges in the mountains or gallop.
ing away down the worn Indian
trail, followed by two powerfully
knit and deep-voiced deer hounds,
as she goes out to enjoy days
sport hunting the deer along the
mountain sides or the black bear
| in the SWampS. She alwavs or