Joe Gale was one of the earliest (and most colorful) white settlers of Eagle Valley, having moved his family here in the late 1860s. As a much younger man, Joe Gale had been a fur trapper and mountain man, and kept company with legendary figures such as Kit Carson, Joe Meek, Ewing Young, and Joseph Walker. Later, Gale was one of the first Americans to settle west of the Cascades.
In the early days of Oregon, Gale was famous for building the schooner Star of Oregon, sailing it to San Francisco Bay, and returning in the spring of 1843 with 1,250 head of cattle, 600 horses, and 3,000 sheep. In the minds of many American settlers, this act challenged the Hudson's Bay Company's economic and political dominance in the Oregon country and was an American settler "Declaration of Independence." In any event, the adventure relieved an acute livestock shortage in the Oregon Country, and made Gale a well-to-do and important settler. On his return from California, the "Governor" was a selected by an electorate of just 102 male settlers as a member of Oregon's three person Executive Committee, the predecessor of today's Oregon state government.
Eliza, Gale's wife and lifelong partner, was a daughter of the influential Wallowa Nez Perce chief Tu-eka-kas (Old Joseph) and a Walla Walla mother. Gale and Eliza were married during his mountain man days, when he was leading fur trapping parties out of Fort Hall (near today's Pocatello, Idaho) for Nathaniel Wyeth. About the time of their marriage, Eliza's half brother, the future famous Chief Joseph (Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt) was born.
In the days before the Nez Perce War (1877), Chief Joseph and his band would camp at the Gale homestead in the late summer, catching salmon in Eagle Creek and enjoying the Gale family's hospitality. Old timers once told stories about wrestling with the famous Chief Joseph as children. Joseph Gale died on his farm in Eagle Valley in 1881 and is buried in the Eagle Valley cemetery. Eliza Gale died in 1905 on the Umatilla Indian Reservation.
Eliza Gale image courtesy of the Oregon State Library.
Updated September 11, 2009