With the recent exciting discovery of the Quileute petroglyph several news reports have made reference to the Quileute village fire that took place in 1889 and the fact that most relics the tribe possessed at that time were lost in that blaze.

Here is what led up to the fire …

By the 1870s, Dan Pullen, born in Maine in 1842, was said to be the richest man in Clallam County. He claimed to hold the title to over 1,500 acres. It was questionable whether Pullen actually held the deed on all the property he claimed to own. Another problem was a large part of Pullen’s “property” also was claimed by the Quileute.

It was about this time A.J. “Salvation” Smith and family arrived at La Push. The Smith family had spent some time at Neah Bay.

There they had endured a bout of typhoid and lost a child to the disease. Now at La Push, Pullen helped them get settled. Alanson Smith was Salvation’s oldest son, a serious young man who got along well with people.

The younger Smith soon got a job as teacher at the Indian School. Since the nearest agent was at Neah Bay he also acted as doctor, dentist and settled disputes between the Quileute and white settlers.

While Smith was of a mild-mannered nature, his younger sister Harriet, who was 18, had a fiery temper and Pullen liked what he saw, and soon the 18-year-old married Pullen who was almost twice her age.

At this time Pullen also was fighting with the Washington Fur Company; they pulled out of La Push and left Pullen to carry on under his own name and filed suit against him.

Smith soon found himself in the middle of a mess between the Quileute’s and his brother-in-law. For years Pullen had kept the Indians subdued with violence or threats of violence and the Quileutes had taken just about enough.

In the summer of 1882, Obi, an Indian doctor and man of influence, went to Pullen’s house to complain that Pullen’s pigs had eaten his potatoes. When Pullen went to inspect the damage, Obi and his wife got Pullen in their house and worked him over good, but another Quileute, Kla-kish-ka, rescued Pullen and Obi went to jail.

Finally, on Feb. 18, 1889, President Grover Cleveland signed an executive order that gave the Quileute a square mile at the mouth of the river with authority for the small reservation vested in the Neah Bay agent. Much of Pullen’s property, including his store building and his own rather pretentious two-story house, lay inside this mile.

It was his contention that his homesteader rights precluded this decision. Pullen had few sympathizers, but found an attorney to take his case.

Later that September almost the entire Quileute tribe traveled to Puyallup to pick hops. While they were gone their entire village was burned to the ground, 26 homes in all. Many believed Pullen and two other men deliberately set the fire. Although Pullen denied it, he immediately leveled the area, planted grass and put up barbed wire fence.

Finally in 1891 the courts decided the Quileutes’ claim took precedence over the settlers. Pullen still launched another suit to challenge the decision, his one-time fortune disappearing in endless court costs and attorney fees.

Harriet Pullen decided to move on after the decision and headed for Alaska and the gold rush.

Smith went on to raise four children of his own and a foster son. He served as postmaster and Justice of the Peace and died in 1938.

The richest man in Clallam County, Pullen, died around 1910, his fortune gone.